Beating Bleeding Heart

An interesting item to have on your serving table at your Halloween party would be a bleeding heart. It's a fairly simple project and didn't cost much since I reused stuff from around the house, but purchasing the individual parts shouldn't be too expensive either. We'll be using a cheap pump to pump the blood, but using just the pump would give us a constant stream. What we want is a more pulse-like action so we'll use a MiniPOV2 kit (or any ATTiny microprocessor) to control a relay.

What you'll need:

1 - Solid State Relay (120VAC to 240VAC coil, 3VDC to 7VDC control voltage)
1 - Single Gang Outlet Box
1 - Electrical Outlet
1 - Single Gang Outlet Cover
1 - MiniPOV v2 kit from Ladyada.net
1 - Small Liquid Pump
1 - Container (for reservoir)
1 - Foil baking tin
1 - Fake Heart
~2ft of aquarium tubing
1 - Aquarium tubing T-valve
Fake Blood
Wire ties
Small gauge Wire
Large gauge wire
1 - Male plug
Small piece of carboard
Soldering iron
Solder

Step 1: Prepare the Relay and Gangbox

First, take your gangbox and remove one of the knock-outs so that your wire can feed through the back of the box. Connect your male plug to the end of your large gauge appliance wire. Feed the opposite end of the wire through the back of the gangbox. Connect your black wire to one terminal on the Solid State Relay (SSR) coil. Connect a wire from the other SSR coil terminal to the gold screw on your outlet.

Connect the white wire to the silver screw on your outlet. Your outlet is now wired completely.