Pumpkin Patch

 It is October. Pumpkin time in California. All over Bay Area there are pumpkin patches: places where  farmers compete for best pumpkin installation.  There are some photos I made at Smith Family Farm near Brentwood.

Guests, you are welcome!

Truckload

Tractor

Halloween Theme

Colors of Fall

It Is a Halloween Time

Recently I upgraded our windows Halloween decoration with two items. Both are LED installations. Each is controlled by Attiny85 chip.

This one is the pumpkin with multi-colored eyes:

You can find place with source code, circuit diagram and some details here: https://github.com/jumbleview/pumpkin

This one is lighted ghost image.

Source code and circuit diagram is here: https://github.com/jumbleview/casper

Some additional description published on "Instructables".

Below is the video of three projects (two mentioned above plus my old project: "Moon with the Bat silhouette") installed in our home window.

In the Moonlight

This is the moon simulator with bat silhouette which I made as a decor for this  Halloween.

The core part of the project is twelve backlight white LED modules ( I bought them from the adafruit). LEDs are controlled by Atmega328 micro controller. The schematic of the project is fairly simple:

Adm here you can see project assembly with some internals visible:

Twelve LED modules put in the middle of sandwich made out of two Plexiglas  sheets attached with the help of Velcro strips.  Paper Bat attached to the front of the moon with Velcro as well as front and back cardboard shields .

 Program to control the device is short enough to be present entirely in this blog:

/*
 * moon.c
 * Created: 10/22/2016 1:14:19 PM
 *  Author: jumbleview
 */ 
#include <avr/io.h>
#include <avr/interrupt.h>
#include "./pt-1.4/pt.h" // http://dunkels.com/adam/pt/

typedef enum {OUT_LOW, OUT_HIGH} OutputLevel;
volatile uint16_t pulses;

#define pinOut(port, bit, outLevel) \
(DDR##port |= (1 << ( DD##port##bit)));\
switch(outLevel) \
{\
 case OUT_LOW: (PORT##port &= ~(1 << (PORT##port##bit))); break;\
 case OUT_HIGH: (PORT##port |= (1 << (PORT##port##bit))); break;\
}
void clearAll()
{ // set all outputs low
 DDRB = 0xFF; PORTB = 0;
 DDRC = 0xFF; PORTC = 0;
 DDRD = 0xFF; PORTD = 0;
}
void activateTimer0()
{
 cli();
 pulses = 0;
 TCCR0A=0; // Normal operation
 TCCR0B=2; // f divider 64  : about 2 ms for interrupt ...
 TIMSK0 = 1; // for system clock f= 1Mhz (CKDIV8 set)
 sei();
}
struct pt wpt; // protothread descriptor

int moonlight(struct pt* mlpt)
{
 PT_BEGIN(mlpt);  // New Moon 
  PT_YIELD(mlpt); 
   pinOut(C,5,OUT_HIGH); pinOut(B,1,OUT_HIGH);
  PT_YIELD(mlpt);
   pinOut(D,0,OUT_HIGH); pinOut(B,2,OUT_HIGH);
  PT_YIELD(mlpt);
   pinOut(D,1,OUT_HIGH); pinOut(B,0,OUT_HIGH);
  PT_YIELD(mlpt); // First Quarter   
   pinOut(D,2,OUT_HIGH); pinOut(D,7,OUT_HIGH);
  PT_YIELD(mlpt);
   pinOut(D,3,OUT_HIGH); pinOut(D,6,OUT_HIGH);
  PT_YIELD(mlpt);
   pinOut(D,4,OUT_HIGH); pinOut(D,5,OUT_HIGH);
   pinOut(C,0,OUT_HIGH); pinOut(C,1,OUT_HIGH);
  PT_YIELD(mlpt);  // Full Moon + Red Eyes
  PT_YIELD(mlpt); 
   pinOut(C,0,OUT_LOW); pinOut(C,1,OUT_LOW);
   pinOut(C,5,OUT_LOW); pinOut(B,1,OUT_LOW);
  PT_YIELD(mlpt);
   pinOut(D,0,OUT_LOW); pinOut(B,2,OUT_LOW);
  PT_YIELD(mlpt);
   pinOut(D,1,OUT_LOW); pinOut(B,0,OUT_LOW);
  PT_YIELD(mlpt);  // Third Quarter
   pinOut(D,2,OUT_LOW); pinOut(D,7,OUT_LOW);
  PT_YIELD(mlpt);
   pinOut(D,3,OUT_LOW); pinOut(D,6,OUT_LOW);
  PT_YIELD(mlpt);
   pinOut(D,4,OUT_LOW); pinOut(D,5,OUT_LOW);
  PT_RESTART(mlpt); // New Moon
 PT_END(mlpt);
}
ISR(TIMER0_OVF_vect)
{
 pulses++;
 uint16_t mod =pulses%750;
 if (mod == 0){
  moonlight(&wpt);  
 }
}
int main(void)
{
 PT_INIT(&wpt); // initiate protothread structure...
 clearAll();
 activateTimer0();
    while(1) { }
}

To  compile and load program into the controller memory I used Atmel Studio 6.1. Code includes three header files.

• File "io.h" contains definitions to work with input/output (comes with Studio installation)
• File "interrupt.h" is defining interrupt vectors (comes with Studio installation)
• File "pt.h" is Adam Dunkels implementation of protothread library.

Protothred library deserves some additional notes. I included it to my programming  tool box recently and nowadays use it any time I need to program embedded devices in "C ". It provides multitasking framework and allows to code device states efficiently and conveniently.  I highly recommend to try it for any programmer  who works with micro-controllers in "C".

As you can see device is simple to made and program. Some additional details you can find in my "Instructables" project.

The only problem I see is relatively high project price. Mostly it is the price of LED modules ($2.50 for each). Nothing could be done here. To gain some additional benefits I decided to substitute  Bat with Reindeer so the device is quite usable  as winter decor: