The Making of a Steampunk Pumpkin

In this Instructable, I am going to walk thru the process I went through to make a steampunk inspired pumpkin for Halloween. Steampunk is a a fusion of materials and technology and a philosophy of re-use and re-engineering. This inspired my to make my Steam Pumpkin. It's complete with a fog machine controlled by the ioBridge IO-204 and lit by BlinkM RGB LEDs. The fog shots out of its ears when motion is detected by a Passive Infrared sensor.

Here is the steam pumpkin in action and some completed project photos:

Step 1 Gather Materials

From around the house I gather up materials to re-purpose to decorate the pumpkin. I found a old purse with some brass loops, gold chain, and covered in fake leather. I also got a lampshade, door knob covers, door hinge, candle stick holder, and some brass brads to hold things together.

I used a Dremel to cut off and reshape metal parts.

Comments

[justjimAZ]

Nice build, and congratulations on making Make online!
There are artificial steampunkins on Etsy too.
http://www.etsy.com/shop/IsherCreations?section_id=10413854

[miles.frain]

What is the purpose of using the ioBridge for this application? Since you aren't connecting your pumpkin to the internet (which seems to be what the ioBridge is all about) , couldn't you just use any microcontroller to activate the fog machine and LEDs when the motion detector is triggered?

[nothans]

You can setup control logic on the web, then disconnect from your network and it acts like a simple micrcontroller. I could have easily sent a Tweet every time the pumpkin was triggered, but that would be so 2008 (since my toaster already does that). You are right though, the IO-204 is more about the web/internet piece. You could really use any microcontroller that can read a digital input state and switch a digital output state to trigger a relay.

What are you building?

[miles.frain]

Thanks clarifying that.

I'm looking to setup some type of home automation system that I can control from my smartphone. The ioBridge seems like the most user friendly route to take, since it handles most of the complex web interface stuff. I have a lot of experience with electronics and microcontrollers, but almost no experience with web based programming, so this will be a good opportunity to get up to speed with HTML, JavaScript, PHP, and all the other tools necessary to make this project come together.

I checked out your iTurn project and your article about using perl with ioBridge, and I'll probably have a bunch of questions for you once I purchase my ioBridge and get started.

[award982]

steampkin :D

[Mikedood]

lol Steam Pumkin

[Salsa766]

 brilliance

[red-king]

 that's awesome!

[corn fluffleberry]

it had to be done good job

[LegoBrickMaster7]

You should have titled it "The Making of a Steampumpkin." Good job, though.