Parts

• Pumpkin
• Knife
• Marker
• Parchment paper
• Toothpicks
• Plastic storage bag
• Wi-Fi LED Strip (USB powered)
• USB battery pack

Design

Clean and dry the outside of your pumpkin. Cut an opening around the stem of the pumpkin. Scoop out the insides and consider making toasted pumpkin seeds. Use the marker to make a design. I let my four-year-old draw the design. I told him that whatever he drew is what I would cut out.

Fold up some parchment paper so it will fit on the inside of the pumpkin and cover up what you carved out. I find this helps diffuse the bright LEDs and create a better effect. Use the toothpicks to hold the parchment in place.

Lights

I am a huge fan of Wi-Fi LED Strip Lights. They are so cheap on Amazon and easy to control over Wi-Fi with the Tuya Smart Life app and devices like the Echo. I use them for my On Air Light Controller For Live Streaming and Online Meetings. These LED strips are USB powered and can be powered by a USB battery for a few hours.

Cut a hole in the back of the pumpkin. This will be where the USB cord will run through. Place the LED strip in the plastic bag, place it inside the pumpkin, and put the cord and the opening of the bag through the hole. This will help keep moisture off of the LED strip.

Configure Wi-Fi LED Strip

The next hurdle is getting your new Wi-Fi LED Strip connected to your Wi-Fi network at your house. You need to know the network name and password. To configure the LED lights, you have to start with the Tuya Smart Life mobile app on your phone. Download the appropriate app for Android or Apple. A side bonus is that the Tuya Smart Life app supports lots of home automation things you might do around the house. When you are searching around Amazon, make sure in the Q&A or rating area to see if the product supports Tuya. If so, you can have everything controlled by one app. Sign up for a new account and then add your LED Strip to your account. Click Add Manually and then Strip Lights (Wi-Fi) Admittedly, this might not go very smoothly. I have found that I need to try the process a few times to get the app to detect my lights. If you run into any trouble, make sure that your lights are in pairing mode and that your Wi-Fi access point supports 2.4GHz.

Name your Strip Lights (Wi-Fi), “Pumpkin”. Whatever you name your lights will be the keyword used by voice-assist systems like Echo or Home.

Interact

With the Tuya Smart Life app, you can interact with the LED lights. Use the “color” tab to set the color and use the “music” tab to have the lights be controlled by sound. My son had a lot of fun yelling into the phone and making sounds to make the lights jump around. Have fun!

My nephews and niece were in town for Halloween and I was struck with the idea of adding a little animation to our Halloween Pumpkin. I wanted to make a pumpkin that changed expression. We made a basic smiley face and angry face by carving grooves into the face of the pumpkin. Then, we laced the EL Wire in and out of the grooves. We used red for the mad expression and blue and green for the smile expression. It was pretty easy to do and I had fun sharing my bits knowledge with the kids. It was rewarding to hear them come up with their own ideas – “We could hook an MP3 player up to this and scare people” or, “What if we added motion detection?”. It was also fun to hear my 5-year-old niece Zoey say, “Electroluminescent”.

Parts:

• EL Inverter – 12v

• EL Wire – Red, Green, and Blue (3 meter length)

• Wall Adapter Power Supply – 12VDC, 600mA

Notes:

I think the Blue EL Wire worked the best and looked the best. The red looks a little orange. The Green EL Wire sometimes didn’t illuminate. You can only illuminate 2 strands of EL Wire at a time with the stuff I had from SparkFun. I need to experiment more with EL Wire and get an EL Wire controller to do some more intricate animations. I will post future projects if I come up with anything interesting.

Always start with sketches when you start your project. It’s important to have a plan to allow yourself to stray knowingly.

EL Wire is LED of the future if you ask me…

Fast forward 20 years and I am still shoving LEDs into pumpkins. This year my inspiration comes from steampunk, a growing subculture fascinated with steam-aged garb and future technology fusion. Steampunk was born of the H. G. Wells and Jules Verne visions of futuristic technology and style. Call it what you want, Steampunk is an inspiring movement of makers and re-users of technology and materials.

Here is my steampunk-inspired pumpkin.

I cobbled together whatever I could find that resonated steampunk. I found my Mom’s old purse that had some faux leather, brass loops, and a gold chain. I also grabbed an old candle holder, a lampshade, a door hinge, a metal coffee filter, and some brass brads found at a thrift shop. My Dremel was used to drill, cut metal, and cause sparks (insert grunt).

Where do you start?

Get some things together…

Going Next Level

I knew that I was going to add some technology to the design and I settled on an automated fog machine that would blow smoke from the ears of the pumpkin. Okay, I know it’s a little literal, but it is a steam pumpkin, not just a steampunk inspired pumpkin. Once motion is detected by the Passive IR sensor, the pumpkin turns red and shoots a blast of smoke from its ears.

Using the ioBridge IO-204, I rigged up the fog machine to trigger when someone walked in front of the pumpkin. I used a passive infrared sensor from Adafruit to detect motion. The IO-204 has an upcoming feature that allows for onboard logic, meaning you can break off of the Internet and have local controls take over. To integrate it with the fog machine, I tapped into the wireless remote control that came with the fog machine. This made it easy to control using a single relay. To light the pumpkin, I bought a BlinkM RGB LED Blaster from Sparkfun. The LEDs are high-intensity lights that you can mix colors together. It turned out to be a neat touch. When someone gets close, I set the color with the IO-204 to an evil red to accompany the smoke.

For more information and more “How-to” detail, check out Instructables.com.

Video Demonstration