fire-effect
A fire effect for your Halloween pumpkin using a Pimoroni Blinkt! If you’d like to create your own pumpkin light effect, you'll need:
- A Raspberry Pi (Make sure you use one that fits in your pumpkin!)
- A Pimoroni Blinkt!
- A power supply (plus monitor, mouse, and keyboard for setup)
- A pumpkin
Take your Blinkt! and attach it to your Pi. If you’re using a 1-3 model, this will be easy enough, but make sure the Pi fits in your pumpkin! If, like me, you need to go smaller, you’ll have to solder your header pins to a Zero before attaching the HAT.
You might want to make sure Raspbian is running on the newest version. Why? Well, why not? You don’t have to upgrade to PIXEL, but you totally should as it’s very pretty. Its creator, Simon Long, was my soldering master for this project. His skills are second to none. To upgrade to Pixel, follow the steps here.
In the terminal, you’ll need to install the Pimoroni Blinkt! library. Use the following to achieve this:
curl -sS get.pimoroni.com/blinkt | bash
You'll need to reboot the Raspberry Pi to allow the changes to take effect. You can do this by typing:
sudo reboot
At this point, you’re more than welcome to go your own way with the Blinkt! and design your own light show (this may help). However, and with major thanks to Jonic Linley, we’ve created a pumpkin fire effect for you.
Within the terminal, type:
git clone https://github.com/AlexJrassic/fire_effect.git
This will bring the code to your Raspberry Pi from GitHub. Next, we need to tell the Raspberry Pi to automatically start the fire_effect.py code when you power up. To do this, type:
nano ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart
At end of the file, add this line:
@python /home/pi/fire_effect/fire_effect.py
Save and then reboot:
sudo reboot
Now you’re good to go.
To add more of a spread to the light effect, I created a diffuser to cover the Blinkt! LEDs. In the video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrlezeYjdu0), you’ll see I used a tissue. I wouldn’t suggest this for prolonged use, due to the unit getting a little warm; I won’t be responsible for any subsequent tissue fires. I would suggest using a semi-opaque bowl (the ones you get a Christmas pudding in) or a piece of plastic from a drinks bottle, and go to town on it with some fine sandpaper.
We also drilled a small hole in the back for the micro-USB lead to reach the Zero. I used a battery pack for power, but you could use a lead directly into the mains. With a larger pumpkin, you could put a battery pack inside with the Pi.