Ever look at a pile of 10mm LEDs and think “mmm, they look just like gumdrops!” These LED gummy candies are so realistic they’ll have your friends fooled at first, then delighted that they are actually edible (and delicious). Head over to the LED Gummy Candy tutorial at the Adafruit Learning System, and watch the video on YouTube (please subscribe!) and Vimeo.
The legs are 3D printed in PLA (corn-based plastic) and they function like toothpicks, we inserted them while the gummies we cooling. It should be noted that gummies are a low-temperature candy, do not use 3D printed parts with any high-temp hard candies!
Here’s yet another really awesome Halloween project we are just discovering now! Really neat project that I’d really like to see in 3D-printed characters! Works lovely to control a bunch of servos with a Pi — check out our tutorial as well! From HariEdo:
I found some squeaky rubber rats at the local dollar store last year. Of course I had to buy ten of them, and then work on some sort of project later. Once I got my Raspberry Pi, I knew I had to combine these into a Hallowe’en decoration project.
Recipe:
2S hobby lipo (2S4P in this configuration) for 7.4V
2x Sparkfun 5V/3.3V breadboard power regulator, modified to remove PTC fuses
Raspberry Pi Model B Rev 1
Adafruit Pi Cobbler GPIO breakout
Adafruit 16 Channel i2c PWM Servo Controller
10x Tower Pro SG92R micro servos (via Adafruit)
20x 5mm Red LEDs
10x 330 Ohm resistors
10x 1 meter Futaba-style servo extensions (via eBay)
10x 6 cm Futaba-style servo extensions (hand assembled)
10x dollar store rat toys
2x solderless breadboards and a few wires
USB micro B plug (chopped a USB plug) to power Raspberry Pi
You want to make a cool robot, maybe a hexapod walker, or maybe just a piece of art with a lot of moving parts. Or maybe you want to drive a lot of LEDs with precise PWM output. Then you realize that your microcontroller has a limited number of PWM outputs! What now? You could give up OR you could just get this handy PWM and Servo driver breakout.
When we saw this chip, we quickly realized what an excellent add-on this would be. Using only two pins, control 16 free-running PWM outputs! You can even chain up 62 breakouts to control up to 992 PWM outputs (which we would really like to see since it would be glorious)
It’s an i2c-controlled PWM driver with a built in clock. That means that, unlike the TLC5940 family, you do not need to continuously send it signal tying up your microcontroller, its completely free running!
It is 5V compliant, which means you can control it from a 3.3V microcontroller and still safely drive up to 6V outputs (this is good for when you want to control white or blue LEDs with 3.4+ forward voltages)
6 address select pins so you can wire up to 62 of these on a single i2c bus, a total of 992 outputs – that’s a lot of servos or LEDs
Adjustable frequency PWM up to about 1.6 KHz
12-bit resolution for each output – for servos, that means about 4us resolution at 60Hz update rate
Configurable push-pull or open-drain output
Output enable pin to quickly disable all the outputs
We wrapped up this lovely chip into a breakout board with a couple nice extras
Terminal block for power input (or you can use the 0.1″ breakouts on the side)
Reverse polarity protection on the terminal block input
Green power-good LED
3 pin connectors in groups of 4 so you can plug in 16 servos at once (Servo plugs are slightly wider than 0.1″ so you can only stack 4 next to each other on 0.1″ header
“Chain-able” design
A spot to place a big capacitor on the V+ line (in case you need it)
220 ohm series resistors on all the output lines to protect them, and to make driving LEDs trivial
Solder jumpers for the 6 address select pins
This product comes with a fully tested and assembled breakout as well as 4 pieces of 3×4 male straight header (for servo/LED plugs), a 2-pin terminal block (for power) and a piece of 6-pin 0.1″ header (to plug into a breadboard). A little light soldering will be required to assemble and customize the board by attaching the desired headers but it is a 15 minute task that even a beginner can do. If you want to use right-angle 3×4 headers, we also carry a 4 pack in the shop.
The tornado costume was a success!
The mechanism was not as dependable as I would have preferred. The socket-set connections were good, but I should have welded the final upright link to the metal bolt inside the “propeller” crossbar at the top.
I shouldn’t have used fiberglas insulation. Spray paint helped keep it subdued, but the fibers still caught the air and broke free, flying around inside and outside of the costume. The fiberglas was irritating.
I’m happy to have created a new style of harness for a costume. I hope it inspires other rotating costumes in the future… and I hope I don’t have to compete against them.
Adafruit community member Will Moindrot combined Mitch Altman’s Adafruit Brain Machine kit with a hairdresser dummy to create an eerie Halloween spectacle … one that flickers at a pattern that just might induce trip cycles. (The lights are really bright, though, so unless you are watching this on video, don’t stare into the lights!)
This is a video of something I made for Halloween. It’s based off the circuit used by Ada Fruit’s Brain Machine kit. Got the electronics from RS Farnel, soldered onto Strip board, I have embedded it into a Hairdressers head. Lots of fun but I am interested in seeing how to manipulate the trip cycle, connect it to Arduino or Raspberry Pi?
Brain Machine Kit v1
Relax and rejuvenate as your brain synchronizes to a wonderful meditative state, and enjoy as you hallucinate beautiful colors and patterns from your subconscious mind!
The Brain Machine provides you with a fun, easy way to meditate, all the while being very photogenic! They work with lights and sounds that pulse at a 14-minute-long meditation sequence of brainwave frequencies. Your brain synchronizes to this meditation sequence, and you meditate. It’s that easy! And the beautiful colors and patterns you vividly imagine along the way make it fun and enjoyable. The Brain Machine works with blinking lights. Be aware that blinking lights are not good for some people, especially those prone to seizures!
Build your own Brain Machine to expand your brain’s technical skills, then lean back and enjoy the light show. They are a blast at parties, a fun way to practice meditation and trip out.L
All electrical components, including pre-programmed microcontroller, wires, LEDs
Over-ear headphones
Dark-tinted safety glasses (fits children and adults)
Color printed overlay for fashionability
2 x AAA batteries included – will last for hundreds of ‘trips’
The Kit does not include basic tools! You will need to provide the tools necessary for construction including a soldering iron, diagonal cutters, drill, hot glue (or other adhesive), scissors, etc. For the list of tools you’ll need, please check the project prep page The project is not very difficult and can be constructed in 2-3 hours at a leisurely pace by someone with no soldering experience. We have plenty of testing spots to help you along.
I started with a Male Blank No Face Mask that I bought on Amazon. I used two of Adafruit’s 1.2″ blue 8×8 LED Matrices for the eyes and a set of three 1.2″ red 8×8 LED Matrices for the mouth. As in the tutorial, I hot glued the 3 mouth matrices together in a strip. The pressure of the outer mask tended to break the bonds and I ended up re-gluing one of the mouth matrices a couple of times. At first I hotglued the matrices to the mask but I found that wire worked much better….
I was hoping to show this off on Show & Tell but it did not come to pass. As you had asked about projects using Adafruit products, I had built a Cylon Pumpkin with a twist – using a Wave Shield and infrared remote to trigger sounds and turn on or mute the eye sound.
I had originally had a problem with the Wave Shield not working but your eagle-eye support forum moderator spotted a potential cold joint (even where I thought I’d touched them up). My thanks to the support. I decided after the build that I needed a better soldering iron so I ordered a Hakko from you and will put it to good use.
Thanks for the great customer support, creativity in what you stock, and the Adafruit Learning Center helping to show the potential of your products.
Now to build a voice changer with the pumpkin’s Arduino/Wave Shield and one of your electret amplifier boards
Adafruit Wave Shield for Arduino Kit – v1.1 – Adding quality audio to an electronic project is surprisingly difficult. Here is a shield for Arduinos that solves this problem. It can play up to 22KHz, 12bit uncompressed audio files of any length. It’s low cost, available as an easy-to-make kit. It has an onboard DAC, filter and op-amp for high quality output. Audio files are read off of an SD/MMC card, which are available at nearly any store. Volume can be controlled with the onboard thumbwheel potentiometer.
October is one of my favorite months and it has been quite a memorable one so far. I have taken a brief breather from developing my delta army and engaged in a playful dialogue with a fellow techie at our local Hacker space here in town. He has an impressive collection of self-made steam punk inspired goggles, of which he is currently underway with his fourth pair. In response to this stellar practice, I have created my own version… a retro leather-trimmed set that has some nifty chain-switch activated light pipe around the lenses to give the illusion of neon.
MintyBoost Kit – v3.0 – The world’s first and only open-source hardware charger: The MintyBoost! Make your own iPod/iPhone/GPS/etc… battery-pack and recharger! This project includes all the electronic parts necessary to build your own MintyBoost: a small & simple (but very powerful) USB charger for your iPod (or other mp3 player), camera, cell phone, and any other gadget you can plug into a USB port to charge. If you have a Nintendo DS/GBA or a PSP you can buy charger cables from us, too.
The charger circuitry and 2 AA batteries fit into an small space such as an Altoids gum or mint tin, and will run your iPod for hours, 2.5x more than you’d get from a 9V USB charger! You can use rechargeable batteries too.
In Minecraft there are a variety of monsters, the most troublesome of these is the “Creeper.” Creepers are plant monsters who explodes when they get next to you usually leaving a crater in the aftermath. Woe to the player who is surprised by their distinctive SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSBOOOM!
In respect to Minecraft’s king of monsters I and some of my cohorts thought it would be entertaining to undertake a project to build a creeper prop with some animated features for Holloween this year. Our hope is to give an authentic creeper experience to some trick-or-treaters! Naturally, making robocreeper actually explode is not something we can really do in our urban environment, but we can load the thing with RGB LEDs, motors, motion sensors, and a loud speaker that will let you know when you have entered the blast zone!
The Adafruit LED Matrix Backpack is meant to have its LED matrix soldered right to the board, but instead I soldered on female headers that would permit me to plug in either the mini LED matrix for code testing or the large matrix for deployment. Someone will probably be along to tell me I need a resistor here or there or I’m going to blow some chip up—and they’re likely right—but it seems to have worked so far as-is.
To connect my own matrix to the I2C Backpack, I cut down a piece of prototyping board and soldered in the male headers, then connected the 8″ wires from the last row and last column of the matrix to the board.
Adafruit LED Matrix Backpacks -What’s better than a single LED? Lots of LEDs! A fun way to make a small display is to use an 8×8 matrix or a 4-digit 7-segment display. Matrices like these are ‘multiplexed’ – so to control 64 LEDs you need 16 pins. That’s a lot of pins, and there are driver chips like the MAX7219 that can control a matrix for you but there’s a lot of wiring to set up and they take up a ton of space. Here at Adafruit we feel your pain! After all, wouldn’t it be awesome if you could control a matrix without tons of wiring? That’s where these adorable LED matrix backpacks come in.
Thanks to Brian Howland for this great video of his PumpkinHead Animatronic project that he had hoped to share during the Halloween Show & Tell!
It uses: Boarduino, Audio Shield, 16 ch servo board, RGB LED Strip and some preliminary software based on your examples.
Show & Tell is great stuff! Great to see so many folks building stuff. I am mostly by myself here in Iowa as a Maker. I will try to get on the show another time.
We look forward to having you on next time!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.
This is a great story, and one that makes you appreciate the internet a bit more. Patton Oswalt’s daughter really wanted her dad to be Doc Ock (Doctor Octopus) to go with her own Spider Man costume this year for Halloween. Patton did some digging and couldn’t find a good costume on the internet, so he posted a tweet asking for help.
Adam Savage from Mythbusters happened to read the tweet, and decided to help out.
Using some inexpensive components, and only 4 hours of his time, he created the Doc Ock costume for Patton. Here is a video of Adam explaining how he made it:
Halloween has been postponed in NYC but probably not for most of you reading this! Here are some highlights from our #electronichalloween series this month. Have a safe and fun night and please send us pictures of your amazing costumes and decor! Add them to the Adafruit Flickr pool, post them up on our Facebook page, or drop us a line on Twitter. And remember, through the end of the day today 10/31, get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category with code HALLOWEEN2012. Above is Phil Burgess aka Paint Your Dragon’s Electronic Demon costume using Adafruit gear, all finished (looking’ great!).
HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.
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