Before You Throw Out That Pumpkin, Make A Dragon-o-lantern

Yes, it’s a little late for Halloween, but before you throw out that rotting gourd sitting outside your front door, how about planning for next year’s festivities with a dragon-o-lantern?

The first dragon-o-lantern that made its way into our tip line is a fire breathing dragon jack ‘o lantern built by [Aaron] for a pumpkin carving contest. The idea is simple; just carve a dragon head out of a pumpkin, insert candle, and spray the open flame with a can of Aquanet. Sure, it’s crude, but with a little engineering it could turn out to be a very, very cool build.

For a slightly more complex build, [Chris] built a fire-breathing jack ‘o lantern triggered by anyone saying the words, “trick or treat.” The key part of this build is a Microsoft Kinect, used for its voice recognition capabilities instead of its capacity to form a 3D depth cloud.

The fire portion of [Chris]’ build is controlled by an Arduino triggering a solenoid to dispense a small amount of fuel into the pumpkin shell. [Chris] doesn’t go over the construction of his ‘poofer,’ but any member of your local hackerspace should be able to show you how it’s done.

Videos after the break.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYJfDWBXQtI&w=470]

3 thoughts on “Before You Throw Out That Pumpkin, Make A Dragon-o-lantern

  1. Since no one else has posted this…

    “It’s dangerous, little children will be killed! Don’t try this at home! You’ll shoot your eye out!”

    BTW, viewing the tags, what is a jack-o-LATERN?

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