Zedomax DIY 116- Halloween HOWTO make a talking pumpkin basket!

HOWTO make make a Talking Halloween Basket!

My girlfriend asked me she wanted a cool halloween basket for her house on halloween, so I made her a halloween backet with some parts that I had lying around.

I figured I could use the voice module that I bought at Radio Shack for like 10 bucks a couple months ago, so here it goes.

We are going to use the PWM (Pulse-Width-Modulator) to make some glowing LEDs, and basic digital outputs to do a simple lip sinking action along with the voice module from Radio Shack.

This recording module is easy to use since it runs on 9V and comes with just 2 buttons, one for recording and one for playing.

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Parts List:

HOWTO

Time to do: About an Hour and a half…

First, let’s make the circuit for our LEDs,make sure to use wires that are wirey (wire made up of wires), so your connections won’t break when you put candy in it.

Now, solder on the 6 330 Ohm resistors like shown below, one end to GND, and the other open.

Then, sold on one of your wires, making sure they are long enough (about 6″ should suffice)…

On the back solder the wire to the resistor together like this:

Next put the rest of the wires the same way:

The back of the CB220 Proto-Board would now look like this:

Bext, wire 6 wires to P5 through P10 of the CB220 Proto-Board like this:

When done, you should now have something like this:

Next we have to make some LEDs. Since each I/O can support about 2 LEDs, solder up 2 LEDs at a time like this:

Make sure solder long (Positive) end of one LED to short (Negative) end of the other LED. You should have One long end and one short end after soldering them together as shown here.

The long end is the Positive and the short end is Negative.

You should now have 6 of these: (I only have 5 on the picture, but you should make 6!)

Next you will wire the short (negative) end of the LEDs to each wire from the resistors.

Like this:

When you wire them all up, you will have a big mess like this:

Next, for each of the long (positive) ends of the LEDs, solder them to the I/O port wires (P5 through P10):

After all the soldering, you should have another great big mess like this:

Next get your voice recording module from RadioShack and record a scary Halloween theme, there’s a recording switch and a play switch.

Next solder one wire to P14:

Now solder the other end of wire to here:

(This is the RadioShack recording module hack, it connects to the Play switch)

Next, solder 2 wires to the + and – of the recording module to get the 9V power out to the CB220 Proto-Board.

Solder the other ends to the CB220 Proto-Board Adaptor Jack like this:

(The bottom part is the negative and the one on the upper-left is the positive of the CB220 Proto-Board)

Now download the Halloween_pwm program to your CB220 using a serial port like shown here and check that LEDs are flashing:

Download Halloween_pwm Program

Okay, now get your halloween pumpkin basket.

Okay, you are ready to go, simply drill holes on locations you wish to use the LEDs. I chose the eyes, nose, and the mouth.

You should make hole just big enough so you can stick the LED through and the LED gets stuck.

Drilled holes:

LEDs inserted:

The inside look:

(You can do some more isolating with some electrical tape if you’d like, I was in more of a hurry, I had to make it in an hour…)

Tape up the Proto-Board:

(It’s a mess but you could probably do a better job than I did…)

Now stuff some candies and you have a talking pumpkin basket!

Enjoy the eyes glowing and you can change some of the delay parameters in the program to match your voice to get some sorta lip-sinking!

Taking it Further…

Yes, you could use this for any type of halloween device whether that be a skull head, your personal costume, or whatever…

Since you are using wires to the LEDs, it’s easy to drill into holes into any other object and make a talking halloween device with flashing LEDs…

<:)

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 🙂