The kids (or maybe their parents) are going to be lined up at [Nathan’s] front porch to get their turn at playing pumpkin Tetris. That’s right, he built a game of Tetris into a real pumpkin. We thought this looked quite familiar when we first saw it and indeed he was inspired by our own LED Matrix Pumpkin from two Halloweens ago. We love seeing derivative works and [Nathan] definitely make few great improvements to the process.
The matrix itself was wired in very much the same way we used, but he added an additional 58 LEDs to nearly double the size of the display. He used a paper grid and power drill to make room for the holes, but improved the visibility of the lights by sculpting square pixels in the skin of the fruit. But how does one control the game? The stem of the pumpkin is actually a joystick. One of the most innovative parts of the physical build was to use drywall anchors on the inside to mount the joystick hardware.
Don’t miss a demo video after the jump.
[via Reddit]
This is great! :D
OMG! and in a REAL rotting pumpkin?!!?!
This is great, congrats!
Love it! But how can you watch the screen and play at the same time?
You haven’t figured out how to watch youtube videos either, have you?
Practice chewing gum wile walking,on second thought patting your head with one hand while rubbing your belly with the other while seated, is safer for the uninitiated.;)
woah
AMAZING!!!! But its a shame he built it into a real pumpkin, he should have used a plastic one, this is so cool it has to be used every year! Oh, and please tell me it plays that music.
In using an actual pumpkin Nathan created a family Halloween tradition of preparing a fresh pumpkin to host the game. Good job…
Geeze. Why is everyone so negative? This is an amazing hack, very clever. I thought HAD had a troll weasel to help with this lol.
NICE!!! I’m totally trying this next year. I’d be worried about kids being too rough with the joystick/stem though.
Racist
The post this was in reply to has been removed, now it makes no sense out of of context