Zedomax DIY 114- HOWTO make a Pitchfork LED for Halloween!

HOWTO

Time to build: About 2 hours.

Okay, if you have one of those black and decker drills, you can drill some holes for the LED pretty quickly…

Okay, start by drilling 5 holes on each fork like shown above, drill through the fork, so you actually have 1 hole on each side.

When you are done, you should see something like above…

Now insert LED into the holes, making sure to note that the LONG side of the LED is on one side, which is POSITIVE, and the other is GROUND. I had to re-solder after I realize some of my LEDs were backwards… (duh~)

Okay, After you put all your LEDs on the pitchfork, pat yourself on the back and go get another cup of coffee(if you haven’t have coffee yet, what’s wrong with you? hehe…)

Okay once you place all the LEDs on the pitchfork, simple wire up the GROUND side together using wires… I found that you can splice your wire kinda like this to save time:

Well if I had the time, I would put all the wires inside the picketfork tubing…but I will just use some red electrical tape today since I gotta also make my custume…

Oh yeah, make sure all the ground (the short side of LEDs) are connected together and you have a wire coming out at the bottom for connecting it later to ground…

Tape it up nice like above…

Now, hook up the positive side of LEDs using individual wires long enough to reach the bottom of the fork (not bottom of the whole pitchfork!!!)

Tape that up too… The above picture shows only one of the forks being taped, do it for the other two forks too and tape them up…(well if you know a better way, awesome! ) )

Once you’ve done that, you should have 15 wires for positive side of LEDs and 1 wire for ground of all LEDs…

Now, let’s add a pushbutton to the bottom of the pitchfork so we don’t have to leave it on all the time and waste battery, we can turn it on whenever we are poking others…

Okay, just drill four holes like above and put 2 wires through the tubing so it comes out on the other side…

Next, solder on your pushbutton like shown here… (test it before soldering…) Then you can simply put some black electrical tape and voila, you have a power on/off switch.

For one of the wires, connect it to the Positive (+) of the 9V battery. The other wire, connect it to CUBLOC pin 24 (VIN).

The negative (-) side of the 9V battery should be connected to CUBLOC pin 4 or pin 23 (VSS), which is ground.

This way, when the pushbutton is pressed, it should power up the CB220 module. When it’s not pressed, you are saving energy, yes, earth too!

Next, I drill some hole for the battery wires to come out…

Now, take those 15 wires and put them on the CUBLOC I/O pins except P1 or pin 6… You can put them anywhere of the P0 through P15 ports… (just don’t use P1, it’s input only)

Well when you are done, use a glue-gun or epoxy like me, as I realized DIP sockets are pain in the neck to solder and will fall apart by itself…but I used a glue-gun and it’s stable as heck…

You ask why I am not using any resistors? Well, first of all, we are only using a battery, second, extra parts = extra work…

Well also connect the Ground from the LEDs to pin 4 or pin 23 of the CB220 (GND)…

You should end up like something above, which isn’t spectacular.
It’s a quick hack for halloween so please don’t complain…

Well, the reason I made this was to make some cool LEDs on the pitchfork… I realized that I can manipulate the code to make it a pitchfork LED that can display letters and numbers!!!

anyway, here’s my array note sheet:

I realized by taking about 5 ms delay, I can display these characters and the rest if matter of coding…

Okay, now, going back to the project,

After you take it up, you should have something like above, which is pretty good for 2 hour hack…

Oh yeah, make sure to download this program,
or you can edit it for your own letters or LED flashing programs…

Download Pitchfork LED Program

zedomax in action:

The whole code:

Const Device = CB220

‘Pitchfor 1st fork pin numbers

Const Byte a = (9,11,12,13,14)

‘Pitchfor 2nd fork pin numbers

Const Byte b = (6,15,8,10,7)

‘Pitchfor 3rd fork pin numbers

Const Byte c = (0,2,5,3,4)

Dim ct As Byte

Dim flashdelay As Byte

flashdelay=3

Do

For ct=0 To 15

‘Draw Z

flash 0

flash 5

flash 10

flash 11

flash 7

flash 3

flash 4

flash 9

flash 14

Next

For ct=0 To 15

‘Draw E

flash 0

flash 5

flash 10

flash 1

flash 2

flash 7

flash 12

flash 3

flash 4

flash 9

flash 14

Next

For ct=0 To 15

‘Draw D

flash 0

flash 5

flash 1

flash 11

flash 2

flash 12

flash 3

flash 13

flash 4

flash 9

Next

For ct=0 To 15

‘Draw O

flash 5

flash 1

flash 11

flash 2

flash 12

flash 3

flash 13

flash 9

Next

For ct=0 To 15

‘Draw M

flash 0

flash 10

flash 1

flash 6

flash 11

flash 2

flash 12

flash 3

flash 13

flash 4

flash 14

Next

For ct=0 To 15

‘Draw A

flash 5

flash 1

flash 11

flash 2

flash 12

flash 3

flash 8

flash 13

flash 4

flash 14

Next

For ct=0 To 15

‘Draw X

flash 0

flash 10

flash 6

flash 7

flash 3

flash 13

flash 4

flash 14

Next

Loop

End

Sub flash(num As Byte)

If num<5 Then

Out a(num),1

Delay flashdelay

Out a(num),0

Delay flashdelay

Elseif num<10 Then

Out b(num-5),1

Delay flashdelay

Out b(num-5),0

Delay flashdelay

Elseif num<15 Then

Out c(num-10),1

Delay flashdelay

Out c(num-10),0

Delay flashdelay

End If

End Sub

For the program, I simply made a function called flash, that will flash the designated part of the LED for like 5 miliseconds…

Happy Halloween!

Taking it Further…

Yes, this was fun diy and I am actually gonna have a chance to use it for the halloween parade in SF!

Happy Holloween!

<:)

If you are having any trouble with above app, please e-mail max@zedomax.com

If you have any cool apps you’d like to share or want some kind of DIY, please e-mail to max@zedomax.com

We do accept free samples for DIYs, please email max@zedomax.com 🙂