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\nLED Stuffed Pumpkin :: Halloween Arduino Project\n

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\n\nPublisher:\n\nProgramming Electronics Academy\n\n\n
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\nIt all started with a trebuchet. I was inspired by helping a friend who built a small trebuchet on his birthday and thought it would be fun to make a larger one that could shoot pumpkins.The idea was that during thanksgiving on the farm...\nIt all started with a trebuchet. I was inspired by helping a friend who built a small trebuchet on his birthday and thought it would be fun to make a larger one that could shoot pumpkins.

The idea was that during thanksgiving on the farm we would lunch pumpkins like clay pigeons and do some skeet shooting. To test the trebuchet I needed ammo, so I bought a bunch of pumpkins from a family.

My daughter picked out one, that she wanted to paint – so I couldn’t launch it.

Fast forward 2 weeks, Halloween is just over a week away and I have an itching desire to stuff electronics in a pumpkin. The previous year I had fun stringing EL wire through a pumpkin to make a face, but this year I wanted something with just a little more pizzazz.

It was still something I wanted to complete in an evening, and I didn’t want to buy any parts to make.

I had a bunch of Blue LEDs and an Arduino sitting around, so I thought it would be easy to hash out.

LEDs, Pumpkin, Arduino – what could be easier?

Well, it wasn’t quite as easy as I thought.

Now I did get it hashed out in an evening and about 30 minutes the next day to load some code, but have you ever had that feeling where you are in the middle of project, and things aren’t quite fleshing out like you thought they should?

And you have that pang of concern that – Oh Crap – this might just not work!

You’ve invested enough time to the point where that really would stink to just drop the project, but you wonder if going any further would just prolong a looming failure?

This usually happens to me if I have jumped into a project with no fore thought what so ever. No pen to paper to think things through. Just start soldering and don’t look back.

This project was no exception. I realized that my pumpkin was too small and that I had been too sloppy with my wire lengths – the ground wires were too short, this made for a frustrating time trying to stuff the LEDs in and get the all the ground wires collected up in one place.

I needed a way to get the grounds all connected up.

What to do, what to do?

I decided to drill more holes. I thought maybe I could braid the ground wires to the outside of the pumpkin, and then connect them all on the outside.

I figured it would give the pumpkin a more “electronic” franksteinian type look.

At least that’s what I told myself.

I quickly realized the braiding thing wasn’t going to be the solution. That’s when I thought about using conductive thread to join all the grounds. And with all the wires sticking out of the pumpkin, the thread connecting them all made it look like a spider web emanating around the pumpkin.

Thank goodness this worked. I managed to pull it off.

And better yet, my Daughter really liked it.

Want to build your own LED Pumpkin Halloween Arduino Project?
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Resource Details

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Educator Rating
Not yet Rated
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Media Length
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3:48
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Grade
Higher Ed
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Subjects
STEM
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Media Type
Instructional Videos
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Source:
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\nProgramming Electronics Academy\n\n
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Date
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2014
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Language
English
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Audiences
For Teacher Use
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Usage Permissions
Fine Print: Educational Use
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Concepts

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halloween, pumpkins, holes, evening, work, time, arrays
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Additional Tags

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arduino, light-emitting diode (invention), pumpkin (ingredient), array, arduino tutorial, ground wires, launch pumpkins, launch, farm, year, small, stuff, daughter, started, trebuchet, easy, project, thought, make, needed, ammo, bunch, wanted, week, pumpkin, face, kind, realized
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Classroom Considerations

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Best For: Explaining a topic
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