How to Make a Screaming Halloween Pumpkin (Jack-o'-lantern)

Every year about this time, we can see a lot of fresh pumpkins on the shelf of the grocery stores waiting for sale, and we know, the Halloween is coming.

In Halloween, pumpkins with creepy monstrous face can be seen almost everywhere. Those traditional pumpkins are also called Jack-o'-lantern. They are usually used as decorative lanterns placed at the porch or on the table to expose the Halloween interior. This instructable will teach you how to make a scary halloween pumpkin that scream out in the dark night XD.

First of all, prepare a small to medium-size pumpkin.

You can buy a real pumpkin from the grocery store, but here I just got a artifial foam-filled one. And of course, to carve a creepy face on it we would need few tools like:

• Saw
• Cake Knife
• Nicking tool / Burin / Graver
• Mark Pen (Red in this case)
• Door Hinge

And to make it able to scream we need electronic parts as follows:

• Seeeduino Lotus
• Grove - Ultrasonic Ranger
  
• Digital RGB LED Flexi-Strip
  
• Grove - Recorder
• Power Bank for power supply

To get a big evil mouse we cut the foam pumpkin into halves and connect two parts with a door hinge. The door hinge can be attached with 3M sticker.

Use nicking tool to carve eyes on the top half and mark the edges with the red mark pen to make it look vicious.

Connect everything as instructed in the image:

• Grove - Ultrasonic Ranger ---- to D2
• Grove - Recorder ---- to D4
• LED Strip ---- to D6

then download the Arduino code and upload to your Seeeduino Lotus.

Here are 2 modes of this program:

1. When the Grove - Ultrasonic Ranger detects less than 20CM(we consider the pumpkin is closed), the Led strip will turn green and blink slowly.
2. When the Grove - Ultrasonic Ranger detects more than 20CM, the Led strip will turn red and blink quickly. What’s more, the Grove - Recorder will play the sounds at the same time.

Check your board to see if it can work well or not.

After everything is set up, you can press shaft Rec on Grove - Recorder to start recording sounds. The recorded sounds will be played when the program runs.

Now you can scooping out the foam inside the pumpkin and set the hardware in it, make sure the speakers is placed a little higher than the others, so it can hold up the upper half of the pumpkin to create an open mouse effect.

To add some real terror we printed a scary face from the internet and hide in inside the pumpkin as well. When people open it, the scream and red LED will be automatically triggered by the ultrasonic sensor.

Be attention ghost image can’t block ultrasonic sensors, otherwise, there would be no red light and screaming

Now put it in a dark place where someone might pass by and wait for the show XD.