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]
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?
Yes, all this is true, but the smell of pumpkin pie will more than cover up the smell of burning children.
I know the first one is supposed to be a dragon but all I see is Glottis from grim fandango.