Faux Irish Pumpkins
What do you get when you use the Faux Candles in a plastic Jack O'Lantern?
That's right, a Faux Irish Pumpkin!
First, the conventional orange JO'L:
Venturing into the Halloween section of my local Wally World (Wal-Mart to the rest of ya)
I found a number of plastic JO'L's which used a single night-light bulb for illumination. The light
and 120VAC cord were removable so installation of a faux candle would be quite do-able. I went
with one LED on three separate pins for added realistic display. I also choose to go with two yellow
LED's and one orange. These were no ordinary LEDs but high brightness LEDs from superbrightleds.com.
As for code, I took the version from Nuts & Volts intended for each LED on a separate pin.
I also commented out the code for both the wind switch and the pot/capacitor and just hard-coded
a constant for the flicker rate. It still seems a little fast so maybe I'll tweak it a tad before next
All Hallow's Eve. Still, orange and yellow make for a great flicker!
I've attached two pictures of the "Happy" orange JO'L for you amusement. One picture is without
LEDs in normal room light and the other with the lights off but the LED's installed and turned on!
Sorry for grainy dark picture -- just wanted to get something quick and dirty... plus I didn't wanna
go upstairs and find my tripod.
Second, the unconventional black JO'L:
After I got the orange smiley JO'L going I remembered that I had some other bright LEDs in my
stock pile. Also, there were some black JO'Ls at Wally World. I wonder... So, I went back up to
my local Wally World (BTW, local is 20+ miles away here in Texas) and examined the insides
of the black JO'Ls with my bill checker. Why would I do that? What's a bill checker? A bill checker
is a little widget on my keychain which was sold to be used for authenticating US treasury bills.
BTW, it contains a DEEP Ultra-Violet LED in it. See where I'm going here?
Of the black JO'Ls I found only one had "innards" that glowed when I shined my bill checker
into it. It wasn't perfect but it was fairly bright compared to the other black JO'Ls. So, a few
dollars lighter and back home I go. I wired up another set of capacitors and resistors to my
Prop-1. I also dug out my bright UV LEDs and hooked them up. <sigh> Alas, I only had two
of them, not the requisite three but... they were bright LEDs so I tried just two and they did
the job!!! Now it looks like I've got green glowing candles in my black JO'L. The evil face on
this Irish Pumpkin helps too!
Again, two pictures attached below named evil_pumpkin.jpg and evil_dark. Again, I didn't
feel like getting my tripod so the dark picture is a bit grainy.
The true test turns out to be: "What would the non-techie wife think of them?"
Well, she thought sufficiently highly of them that I'm going to have to find some more
for next year -- quite a few more.
Oh well, Halloween's over with now. I may tweak the JO'Ls some more but I'd really like to
get something simpler and without all the wires. Even the Prop-1, as nice a package as it is,
seems to me to be serious overkill and hardware overhead for such a task. Guess we'll wait
and see what Jon Wms. SX version will look like.
Hope y'all got enough candy to hold you 'til Easter!!!
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
-Rusty-
--
Rusty Haddock = KD4WLZ = rusty@fe2o3.lonestar.org
**Out yonder in the Van Alstyne (TX) Metropolitan Area**
Microsoft is to software what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking
That's right, a Faux Irish Pumpkin!
First, the conventional orange JO'L:
Venturing into the Halloween section of my local Wally World (Wal-Mart to the rest of ya)
I found a number of plastic JO'L's which used a single night-light bulb for illumination. The light
and 120VAC cord were removable so installation of a faux candle would be quite do-able. I went
with one LED on three separate pins for added realistic display. I also choose to go with two yellow
LED's and one orange. These were no ordinary LEDs but high brightness LEDs from superbrightleds.com.
As for code, I took the version from Nuts & Volts intended for each LED on a separate pin.
I also commented out the code for both the wind switch and the pot/capacitor and just hard-coded
a constant for the flicker rate. It still seems a little fast so maybe I'll tweak it a tad before next
All Hallow's Eve. Still, orange and yellow make for a great flicker!
I've attached two pictures of the "Happy" orange JO'L for you amusement. One picture is without
LEDs in normal room light and the other with the lights off but the LED's installed and turned on!
Sorry for grainy dark picture -- just wanted to get something quick and dirty... plus I didn't wanna
go upstairs and find my tripod.
Second, the unconventional black JO'L:
After I got the orange smiley JO'L going I remembered that I had some other bright LEDs in my
stock pile. Also, there were some black JO'Ls at Wally World. I wonder... So, I went back up to
my local Wally World (BTW, local is 20+ miles away here in Texas) and examined the insides
of the black JO'Ls with my bill checker. Why would I do that? What's a bill checker? A bill checker
is a little widget on my keychain which was sold to be used for authenticating US treasury bills.
BTW, it contains a DEEP Ultra-Violet LED in it. See where I'm going here?
Of the black JO'Ls I found only one had "innards" that glowed when I shined my bill checker
into it. It wasn't perfect but it was fairly bright compared to the other black JO'Ls. So, a few
dollars lighter and back home I go. I wired up another set of capacitors and resistors to my
Prop-1. I also dug out my bright UV LEDs and hooked them up. <sigh> Alas, I only had two
of them, not the requisite three but... they were bright LEDs so I tried just two and they did
the job!!! Now it looks like I've got green glowing candles in my black JO'L. The evil face on
this Irish Pumpkin helps too!
Again, two pictures attached below named evil_pumpkin.jpg and evil_dark. Again, I didn't
feel like getting my tripod so the dark picture is a bit grainy.
The true test turns out to be: "What would the non-techie wife think of them?"
Well, she thought sufficiently highly of them that I'm going to have to find some more
for next year -- quite a few more.
Oh well, Halloween's over with now. I may tweak the JO'Ls some more but I'd really like to
get something simpler and without all the wires. Even the Prop-1, as nice a package as it is,
seems to me to be serious overkill and hardware overhead for such a task. Guess we'll wait
and see what Jon Wms. SX version will look like.
Hope y'all got enough candy to hold you 'til Easter!!!
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
-Rusty-
--
Rusty Haddock = KD4WLZ = rusty@fe2o3.lonestar.org
**Out yonder in the Van Alstyne (TX) Metropolitan Area**
Microsoft is to software what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking
Comments
Ryan
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Ryan Clarke
Parallax Tech Support
RClarke@Parallax.com