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Spooky pi-topHALLOWEEN Tutorial

By Andrea Buforn on Oct 28, 2016 1:30:22 PM

Topics: Projects

Give your pi-top or pi-topCEED a haunted feel this Halloween with this spooky jack-o’- lantern tutorial!

Before we get started, this is the boo-tiful equipment required to achieve the ghastliest effects:

  • 5x yellow witches boil LEDs
  • 1x blood red LED
  • 6x 100 Ω reVolting resistors
  • 1x pi-topPROTO (or breadboard)
  • A few standard wires
  • 1x acrylic slice (included with your pi-top or pi-topCEED)
  • Access to a laser etcher (optional)
  • 1x pi-top or pi-topCEED

So, let's get started by transforming our pi-topPROTO board into a magic dancing candle.


Step 1: Wire LEDs to your pi-topPROTO board

Screen Shot 2016-10-28 at 17.53.37.png

  • The red LED should be wired to pin 22(GPIO 25) on your pi-topPROTO board
  • The yellow LEDs should be wired to pins 11(GPIO 17), 13(GPIO 27), 16(GPIO 23). 29(GPIO 5), 32(GPIO 12)

The red and yellow lights will create a spook-tacular orange hue for your laser etched jack-o’- lantern acrylic slice!

Step 2: Wire LEDs to ground

Screen Shot 2016-10-28 at 17.55.35.png

  • Wire the cathode (negative pin) to the ground rail on your pi-topPROTO board, to keep things neat we have done this on the back of our pi-topPROTO board as seen in the image above!

Step 3: Use resistors to connect your LEDs to GPIO pins

Screen Shot 2016-10-28 at 17.57.45.png

  • Next, we need to wire the yellow LEDs to RPI pins 11, 13, 16, 29 and 32
  • The red LED should be wired to pin RPI pin 22
  • This will complete the full circuit

Now, we are almost there! Put the following Python code into the pi-topCODER editor and click run to test it:

import random
from time import sleep
from gpiozero import PWMLED

RED_LED = PWMLED(25)

YELLOW_LEDS = [
    PWMLED(17),
    PWMLED(23),
    PWMLED(27),
    PWMLED(5),
    PWMLED(12)
]

while True:
    RED_LED.value = random.uniform(0, 0.5)

for led in YELLOW_LEDS:     
led.value = random.uniform(0, 0.5)

sleep(random.uniform(0, 0.5))

The code uses randomised pulse width modulation (PWM) in order create a candle flicker effect!

Finally, we need to etch our spooky acrylic slice - the design can be downloaded in .dxf format (see below).

Download the dxf file here: halloween

Here is our ghastly haunted pi-top acrylic slice:

screen-shot-2016-10-28-at-18-09-43

Eerie green halloween……. ;)

So, for the final effect. Let’s run our code again!

Here is your spooky phantom pumpkin finished project!

halloween.gif

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