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!

I recently was looking around my game room for some inspiration for a quick project. I have a custom arcade cabinet based on RetroPie running on a Raspberry Pi attached to a smart TV. It has been a lot of fun playing my video games from 30+ years ago. My project this time was to add a custom acrylic sign with an RGB backlight. I wanted the cabinet to look more like an actual arcade cabinet.

My go-to site for graphic printing is Signs.com. I have used it many times for upgrading Arkham Horror: The Card Game and for other projects around the house. I designed a sign using Adobe Illustrator and got it made out of acrylic. I cobbled together vector logos of many of my favorite systems plus the RetroPie logo and named the arcade cabinet, “The Scharcade”. See what I did there? Do you see it?

I used an RGB Led Strip with IR Remote Control as a backlight for the sign and to edge light the TV screen. The IR remote is handy to change the color of the lights. Just make sure that you expose the IR receiver on the power supply so you can change the color from the front of the cabinet.

My upgrade to the upgrade was to frost the arcade cabinet sign to make it look better. The original sign was completely transparent and you could see the lights shining through from each one of the LEDs. LEDs love diffusers. To fix this issue, I used Rust-Oleum Frosted Glass Spray Paint on the backside of the sign. I tested out the spray paint on a scrap piece of acrylic. I was really worried about ruining the custom sign. Once I was confident with the results, I went ahead and sprayed one even coat of the paint on the backside of the sign. It takes about 20-30 minutes in order for the paint to activate. I wanted in anticipation for 20 minutes and I gradually saw the clear acrylic turn frosted. I was really happy with the results. The 20 minutes felt light an eternity.