Weekend Project: Carve a High-Tech Jack-O-Lantern

Need ideas for a weekend project? How about carving that pumpkin you bought two weeks ago? Using LED lights instead of candles has been all the rage among pumpkin carvers lately, especially now that you can buy LED candles. This year why not go a little high-tech by creating a Cylon jack-o-lantern with glowing red lights inside. The guys over at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories just posted an updated version of last year's project, "Make a Cylon Jack-O-Lantern" complete with an updated list of the tools you'll need. You can watch a video of it here for a little inspiration.

Creating your own Cylon jack-o-lantern is a two-part project. First, you'll need to carve the pumpkin to look like a Cylon; then you'll need to assemble a circuit that controls six LED lights. If you're carving a bigger pumpkin, you'll need to create more than one circuit. Evil Mad Scientist Lab says building this particular circuit will cost less than ten dollars and can be done in less than two hours without any programming at all.

If that's too complicated, you can still create a high-tech jack-o-lantern with a little video help from Trendpimp who shows you how to make an LED pumpkin with a switch on the back, or you could just take the easy way out by buying an LED Halloween pumpkin kit.

Don't have time to carve your own pumpkin? These days it's too easy not to go online to buy a pre-carved pumpkin.