📄️ Overview
The Pumpkinator is a Halloween prop built by Fahrenheit Robotics Team 6882 students. When someone walks past, it triggers spooky sound effects and a colorful RGB light show, all from inside a real pumpkin.
📄️ Preparation Steps
These are the steps needed to prepare a kit before it's assembled. Preparation involves soldering and crimping, so it works best when done in batches across many kits at once. Each item below produces a finished part or sub-harness that gets plugged in later during Assembly Steps, which needs very few tools, if any.
📄️ Assembly Steps
Steps for assembling a kit that's already been through Preparation Steps — the case is printed and the harnesses (power switch, LEDs, PIR sensor, speaker, sound card jumpers) are already soldered and crimped, so this is the student-facing process for putting everything together. This page is a work in progress and will grow as steps are added. See the Overview for photos and pinouts of each component.
📄️ Light and Sound Shows
The Pumpkinator's candle flicker, light shows, and sound effects all come from two places: the code running on the Arduino Nano, and the MP3 files stored on the sound card. This page shows how to load both, which is also how you would change the shows or swap in your own sounds.
📄️ Troubleshooting Your Kit
Your Pumpkinator kit was assembled and tested by a Fahrenheit Robotics student before it got to you, but it's built on a breadboard, and breadboard wires can shift loose during shipping or handling. The good news: fixing it is usually pretty easy, and usually needs no soldering or tools beyond your fingers.