Halloween Project 2013: Pumpktris!

Posted By tomfrausto on Oct 27, 2013

Pumpktris Complete! My Halloween project for 2013 is Pumpktris!  Like Nathan Pryor of hahabird.com said “What do you get when you combine a pumpkin with the classic video game Tetris? Pumpktris! Fully playable, embedded in a pumpkin, and with the stem serving as a controller.” Here’s my attempt at creating Nathan’s award winning Pumpktris.   The foam pumpkin doesn’t carve like a real pumpkin so it doesn’t quite “glow” like his. On the positive side it will be around for a few Halloween’s to come and who knows what features I can add in the future! I won’t take credit for any of the creative side of coming up with such a unique project but I will take credit for the 18+ hours of actually building it! I’m hoping my girlfriend can help me spruce up the outside before Halloween or else it will have to wait for next year to get a face lift. Last night I had the first chance to turn it on and my girlfriend’s nephew Ian couldn’t wait to be the first to play! Check it out.     Why I Did This Like I mentioned on my previous post Halloween Project Coming Soon! I really just wanted to have some fun building something that most people (especially my friends and family) haven’t seen. I bumped into Pumpktris last Halloween on Instructables.com and immediatley had the desire to build my own! A year later I still had the desire so I decided to start working on it and have some fun. Unfortunately after my 4th hour of soldering, I definitely started wondering WHY  I thought this would be fun! Now I’m super happy I pushed through and completed it on time (my self-imposed deadline 10/26) to bring it to our annual pumpkin carving gathering. I’ve learned that if I don’t set deadlines for myself I can be a professional procrastinator. After Ian started playing, it was tough to get him to share! He’s a great kid and eventually he let everyone have a turn…sorta of! I knew the project itself would be a ton of fun but I never really thought about how much people would really enjoy playing games on a pumpkin.  This really inspires me to do more fun project like this every now and then so I can write about them here for everyone to enjoy.   The Guts of It Here’s a slideshow of the entire process if you want to save yourself the grueling details: This slideshow requires JavaScript.   THE LED MATRIX Here’s a quick list of what the LED screen is made of: 2 matrices – 64 LED’s...