dirknerkle
Supporting Member
This animated pumpkin is a new product at Holiday Coro this year (www.holidaycoro.com) and what got me off the fence to buy it was that it came with 3 Vixen sequences (or LOR/LSP) and sample music: Monster Mash, Ghostbusters and Thriller. To use the music legally you have to actually own a copy of it, but who doesn't have a copy of those three anyway?!?!? But if you don't, you can always pick them up for peanuts from iTunes... or Amazon.
This turned out to be a fun, 1-day project. Of course, I made it wireless :mrgreen: so I can put it anywhere outside where nobody will trip on the wires... The box measures 46" square by about 4 inches deep, so it's a pretty sizeable item. I had some old 4-channel SSRs that had been sitting in a box for at least a couple years; they're driven by a prototype Ren816XB controller I invented last year but have never used. The pumpkin takes 8 channels but the music is sequenced for 16 channels with the thought that you might also light 8 smaller singing pumpkins out in front of or near the big one. I purchased 8 plastic pumpkin-size treat buckets at Target for $1 each and plan to light them instead of carve the real things, so you'll see 8 extension cords coming out of the bottom back -- one for each of the "choir of pumpkins."
I've only run a couple tests on it and while it works fine, the project allowed me to reuse some otherwise unused equipment as well as some old lights. Some of the lights need a little replacement color, so that's next on my agenda -- recoloring some of the mini-lights. All totalled, the pumpkin takes 561 lights, and of course, some sections need odd numbers of lights so you end up with some extras but I just left them inside the box. There's no need to black them out as the pumpkin face is opaque black coro and they won't be seen anyway.
Observation: Holiday Coro makes it very easy to build one of these. Their build manual is first-rate. But don't for a minute think you can put this together in 1-hour though -- I spent the entire day on it and I still haven't painted the sides black so the box won't be so visible from the side. And, of course, the 8 singing pumpkins are yet to be wired. This would be a fantastic father-son project, but being that my "kids" are 26 and 28, they opted to let me handle it alone... :lol: I'm a bit concerned about storage because with all those lights sticking out like that, it's pretty fragile. Right now I have it in the garage leaning against my boat. but I fabricated handles for each side and I may be able to suspend it from the ceiling -- that would certainly be out of the way!
When it's done and I have the pumpkin choir ready, I'll shoot a little video and add a link. Until then, these pictures will have to do...
This turned out to be a fun, 1-day project. Of course, I made it wireless :mrgreen: so I can put it anywhere outside where nobody will trip on the wires... The box measures 46" square by about 4 inches deep, so it's a pretty sizeable item. I had some old 4-channel SSRs that had been sitting in a box for at least a couple years; they're driven by a prototype Ren816XB controller I invented last year but have never used. The pumpkin takes 8 channels but the music is sequenced for 16 channels with the thought that you might also light 8 smaller singing pumpkins out in front of or near the big one. I purchased 8 plastic pumpkin-size treat buckets at Target for $1 each and plan to light them instead of carve the real things, so you'll see 8 extension cords coming out of the bottom back -- one for each of the "choir of pumpkins."
I've only run a couple tests on it and while it works fine, the project allowed me to reuse some otherwise unused equipment as well as some old lights. Some of the lights need a little replacement color, so that's next on my agenda -- recoloring some of the mini-lights. All totalled, the pumpkin takes 561 lights, and of course, some sections need odd numbers of lights so you end up with some extras but I just left them inside the box. There's no need to black them out as the pumpkin face is opaque black coro and they won't be seen anyway.
Observation: Holiday Coro makes it very easy to build one of these. Their build manual is first-rate. But don't for a minute think you can put this together in 1-hour though -- I spent the entire day on it and I still haven't painted the sides black so the box won't be so visible from the side. And, of course, the 8 singing pumpkins are yet to be wired. This would be a fantastic father-son project, but being that my "kids" are 26 and 28, they opted to let me handle it alone... :lol: I'm a bit concerned about storage because with all those lights sticking out like that, it's pretty fragile. Right now I have it in the garage leaning against my boat. but I fabricated handles for each side and I may be able to suspend it from the ceiling -- that would certainly be out of the way!
When it's done and I have the pumpkin choir ready, I'll shoot a little video and add a link. Until then, these pictures will have to do...
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