Getting ready for pumpkin fun
While looking for something totally unrelated on the Internet a few days ago I came across a Larson Pumpkin. As it was coming up to Halloween I decided to have a go myself and see what I could do using an Arduino.
Here are some pictures of the work in progress:
A work in progress
The design was very simple. An Arduino board with 9 output pins powering 9 LEDs. 8 red ones on the front for the scanning eye and a yellow one inside to replace the candle. The code is also very simple. A rework of code I wrote many years ago to play a pong sort of game with the ball bouncing back and forth. It keeps a counter for where the light is in the row and a counter for what direction it is heading +1 or -1 for forwards or backwards and then just keeps adding until it hits one end.
The working pumpkin
I’ll upload that and some more photos for a ‘how to’ if anyone else fancies having some pumpkin fun. The pumpkin travels to work with me tomorrow as it is ‘Halloween’ Day. When it comes home tomorrow I am going to add a little speaker and a distance sensor – thank you Rob for the loan 
and I’ll add some code so it makes noises and they increase in pitch and maybe volume as people get nearer and nearer. Oh the fun you can have with a pumpkin when you add an Arduino.