midterm pumpkin

Initial sketches:

initial sketches

Initial ideas were a pumpkin with leds embedded on the rind to create an ‘inverted’ lit up face and a disney-esque magical castle pumpkin where if you walked past it it would light up to form a shooting star (starting from the star, and then spreading outwards like the barograph example)

After thinking a long time, I decide to come up with a pumpkin pie idea:

pumpkin pie and slice

It works like this: inside the pie slice would be pin13 led and the pir motion sensor to ‘lure’ unsuspecting people to the pie-slice….. once the motion is triggered, the larger pie-face would light up farther away. I decided to make it out of felt and aluminium foil, to keep to the handmade look

pir motion sensor

The good part about having a seperate slice and also stuffing was that it helped hide the sensor and decrease sensitivity. Here is the shield I made for the sensor, underneath the orange felt is a thin layer of aluminium foil.

Initial tests:

pie slice lure test

The giant red leds from mad scientist kit lit up really brilliantly and well

serial monitor checking

I used the pull-up switch method for the pir motion sensor which was always on ‘high’

full test setup

Full test setup with both the pie slice and pie face – I had a lot of problems with the pie face because the leds weren’t bright enough to see through the fabric!!!! I should’ve gotten the larger leds like that red one instead of the smaller leds which didn’t really show up as well. In the final video I lifted the covering a little so you could see the leds underneath.

Final video:

http://vimeo.com/31586631

Final code:

http://www.mediafire.com/?btjqyta3wyqorpb (zipped)