Days past people used to just carve a scary face in a pumpkin, drop in a candle and call it a day, but for our kind of crowd that’s not going to cut it. [Alexis] stuffed this Jack o Lantern with a lot of brain power and even connected it up to the internet for community control.
At the core of the festive decoration is a spark core, which allows micro controlled special effects to be triggered via Twitter. RGB LED’s change colors, flicker and flash and even a spooky ghost pops out of the top. Along with all that, a sound sensor is added in so the lights can react to the ambient sound around the lantern.
If you get too close an ultrasonic sensor will trigger the ghoulish treat with lights and animation, but what about spooky sounds? That is also included thanks to a toy found at the local discount store, which had its guts removed and its trigger button replaced with a transistor.
Now sights and sounds can all be controlled remotely or in an active response mode to entertain all the little goblins visiting the house this Halloween. Join us after the break for a quick demo video and don’t forget to send in links to your own pumpkin-based hacks this week!
BOOO!!!
Do coplour fading LEDs like this annoy anyone else in that they seem to spend next to no time of pure red? Why does this appear to be the case? I know every colour will be on for the same amount of time, but to me it really seems as if it zooms through the red stages to get back to blue
I’m no expert, but I’d guess that it has to do with how the human eye perceives colors. Our sensitivity to red seems to be less than green and blue. This means that red would appear to be washed out quicker by other colors while transitioning. This was a useful link when thinking of the question: http://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/3871/which-shades-hues-of-color-are-easiest-to-distinguish-for-humans
This is pretty cool, yet another father & son project added to the ever growing list
ahah actually it was an educational project for highschoolers.