One of our favorite things about the Nerdoween–uhh, pardon us–Halloween season is seeing all the inventive ways people use pumpkins. We love a good pumpkin recipe and revel at the sight of them smashing to bits. Yet, nothing is as seasonally satisfying as when we lay eyes on a particularly awesome jack-o’-lantern. This one just happens to look right back at us.
This copiously cornea’d cucurbita comes to us from a recent post on Laughing Squid and just might be the coolest jack-o’-lantern we’ve seen this year. YouTuber 68percentwater created this multi-eyed beast by combining some party store plastic eyeballs, a few household items, and a programmable Arduino micro-controller kit.
Sections of PVC pipes hold the eyeballs on a pivot and are connected to small servo motors all wired together. The Arduino unit generates random numbers making each eyeball look around. The result is a jack-o’-lantern that looks equal parts menacing and paranoid as its eyes dart around.
The video also serves as a bit of a tutorial on how to build your own. Arduino kits are pretty affordable and they offer support on how to use them should you decide to build your own eyeball kit (weirdest sentence of the week so far). The materials used seem pretty stable so it’s probably something you could re-use for years to come that would make jack-o’-lanterns as easy as cutting its mouth and gouging some eye-holes. (wait, that’s the weirdest sentence.)
Thinking of giving your Halloween decorations an upgrade in tech? Let us know what you’re planning in the comments below!
Image:Â 68percentwaterÂ
Get ready for Halloween with these spooky stories!
- Why Scream 4 is the most underrated movie in the franchise!
- Make your very own Hocus Pocus spell book purse!
- Ranking all the songs in A Nightmare Before Christmas!
