diy-blinky-bot

Assemble the Pumpkin

Cardstock pieces

The coloured cardstock pieces of pumpkin blinky bot cut out from the kit parts

Orange pumpkin skin over the yellow mouth and eye pieces, giving 3D effect

Pumpkin cardstock body with black mouth back and green stem added

Transfer the Circuit

There are multiple ways of laying out and wiring the driver chip to the LED matrix, the Arduino board, and the remaining components. One version is described below.

NOTE: This section is still very rough and abbreviated.

LED matrix component viewed from the bottom, with a yellow wire wrapped and soldered to each pin

Assemble the Pro Mini Arduino

Diagram of connections to Arduino Pro Mini needed for the pumpkin Blinky Bot Diagram of connections to MAX7219 driver chips needed for the pumpkin Blinky Bot

The connection points for the wires in the above diagrams were chosen to minimize the number of connections directly to the Arduino Pro Mini, and the MAX7219 display driver chips. Where practical, connection points have been move to the resistor and capacitor leads. They should be easier to add multiple wire-wrap connections to, are less sensitive to soldering, and will not have any close neighbouring pins to get in the way. The GND and VCC connections to the Arduino Pro Mini, for the MAX7219, are actually wire wrapped to the leads of the 10µF capacitor shown in the diagram for the wiring of power for the Arduino board.

Front view of the completed pumpkin Blinky Bot with eyes lite