Tag Archives: Halloween

Skull Eyes Project

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A couple of years ago I picked up two plastic skull decorations in the post-halloween sales. Once I got them home, it occurred to me that they could become an interesting project. Adding some lights to their eyes with some fun effects was the plan. It has taken me a while to get time to do this, but I finally pulled all the parts together and modified the basic plastic skull with some LED eyes.

The parts, in addition to the skull of course, are as follows:

The circuit is very simple:

Power comes from the USB, which also acts as the data connection to the computer for programming the board.

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Halloween Fix

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Last year I bought a second one of these hanging flaming baskets from Spirit Halloween. This year, I put them out again and a couple of hours into the first night the newer one failed, completely.

Unimpressed, I brought it back down and took it apart. Inside was a very cheap 120 Vac to 12 Vac board, slightly modified from the standard part with the same part number to add a 12 Vdc output to drive the fan that blows the material up to emulate flames.

Given that I couldn’t get an exact matching part to replace the one that died, and that these are only about $25 to buy new, I decided that instead of fixing it, I would improve it.

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