The Making of a Steampunk Pumpkin

Step 3 Add Some Techno Enhancements

One thing for sure I wanted was steam shooting out of its ears when someone apprached the pumpkin. Also, I wanted it to be lit with different colors.

In order to make this work, I used a Passive Infrared sensor that I got from Adafruit to detect motion. When the pin goes high it causes the fog machine to turn on. I ran tubing from the fog machine to the ears of the pumpkin. The ioBridge IO-204 controlled the fog machine by monitoring for motion and also setting the color of the BlinkM RGB LEDs. All of the logic was easy to setup.

The fog machine came from Spencers. It's a 400w wireless controlled fog machine. It was easy to control by replacing the buttons with relays. The relays were controlled by the IO-204 and worked as expected, wireless being a nice touch. I don't recommend running the fog machine for very long or without supervision. I will be setting up the pumpkin on trick-o-treat night and some parties.

To change the RGB colors, all you have to do is send a Pulse Width to each color channel. You can mix your own colors. I wanted it to turn a deep red when fog was ready to shoot.

Comments

[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.