Stupid Pumpkin

1) Project title: Stupid Pumpkin

2) 2-3 Sentences explaining concept.

My project is entitled Stupid Pumpkin because it is a pumpkin that people want to hit. It uses numerous LEDs using a shift register and uses blink, fade, multicolored, etc. to show its stupidness. It also has a motor that also turns according to the direction the pumpkin is hit to represent the pumpkin “seeing stars” after he gets hit. I’ve also used LEDs to show the pumpkin crying after he is it. Potentiometers are used so that people can change the pumpkin’s eye color.

3) 2-3 Sentences on most challenging and most interesting parts of your experimentations.

It was the first time I was using a shift register and a servo motor. I knew I wanted to use a lot of LEDs but my Arduino could only support so many output pins therefore I used the shift register to connect 8 LEDs to represent the mouth. Understanding the concept of the shift register was quite challenging. Another challenging part was working with the servo motor’s angles. I wanted to control the amount and the angle the servo motor turns and I had to work with a code that detected which numbers represented the turning of the servo motor. What is fun about my project is the servo motor turning according to which side the pumpkin is hit and that the pumpkin cries and makes a sad smiley face when it is it.