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Pumpkin Arch


ShaggySS

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Took on a big project last minute this year and I think it turned out pretty good.  Check out my pumpkin arch.  The great part about this arch is its all 2811 nodes inside those pumpkins.  While it required a ton of soldering and connectors I think it turned out pretty good.  My wife is going to put the finishing touches on it by adding leaves around the pumpkins to hide the frame and wires.  What do you think!

 

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Shorten Frame to Play with inside

 

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Outside in the wild.  

 

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Magic!

 

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Colorful Magic

 

 

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Sweet. That thing is freaking awesome.

How hard is it to store? Please say it is hard so I don't start planning one.

Ask me November 1st.  Maybe the 2nd.  I am a very big on holiday decor being out of sight in the off season so it will go to the attic.  All the pumpkins are just wire tied to the PVC frame so the plan is to number them and use that picture from above to reconstruct next year.  Each pumpkin is wired with water proof connectors so they all come apart easy and since the pumpkins are light I can just toss them in the attic on top of all the fluffy insulation.  

 

Since I went with 2811 nodes I don't have to really worry about which order I put them back up in either.  Plus it makes it very simple to wire to.  I did run into one unfortunate issue though.  Since I have small, medium and large pumpkins each with more lights than the next I had an issue when it came to programming a simple thing like a chase from one side to another.  Copy and pasting didn't work because when I got to a randomly placed medium or large pumpkin it threw things off so I had to rewire 10 pumpkins last night but I think it will make my life much easier.  I put 6 nodes in the small, 9 in the medium and 15 in the large.  Notice they are all multiples of 3.  So while I will be using 3 connectors on my E682 controller I can set the small pumpkins to count each every 2 nodes as 1 so in LOR I only need 9 DMX channels (3 RGB)  The medium I do 3 to 1 so keep with the 9 DMX and lastly if you couldn't figure it out 5 to 1 for the large pumpkins so when it comes to programming life is easy.....er

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I showed the pictures to my wife and she thought it was the greatest thing ever, asking me to build one for next year already lol. Just out of curiousity where did you get the pumpkins? Are they the carvable foam ones?

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I showed the pictures to my wife and she thought it was the greatest thing ever, asking me to build one for next year already lol. Just out of curiousity where did you get the pumpkins? Are they the carvable foam ones?

My wife was instantly in love with the idea also.  She did a great job at finding the pumpkins at the most surprising place of all.  Goodwill.  I would say about 35% of them are from there.  The other 50% was from Nov 1st shopping at various stores like Target, and Wal-Mart.  I ended up paying full price for the other 15%.....I hopefully those numbers add up. We looked at the carveable ones but they were expensive.  Stupid crafting store games they cost twice as much as you can buy carved ones for at Target and Walmart but they sell them at 50% off so not only do you pay the same you have to bust out that creativity and carve it.  I am not that creative! 

 

This year Walmart has so many different styles of pumpkin faces so that is where I will be Nov 1st.  Hopefully you aren't in my area!   :P

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I showed the pictures to my wife and she thought it was the greatest thing ever, asking me to build one for next year already lol. Just out of curiousity where did you get the pumpkins? Are they the carvable foam ones?

My wife was instantly in love with the idea also.  She did a great job at finding the pumpkins at the most surprising place of all.  Goodwill.  I would say about 35% of them are from there.  The other 50% was from Nov 1st shopping at various stores like Target, and Wal-Mart.  I ended up paying full price for the other 15%.....I hopefully those numbers add up. We looked at the carveable ones but they were expensive.  Stupid crafting store games they cost twice as much as you can buy carved ones for at Target and Walmart but they sell them at 50% off so not only do you pay the same you have to bust out that creativity and carve it.  I am not that creative! 

 

This year Walmart has so many different styles of pumpkin faces so that is where I will be Nov 1st.  Hopefully you aren't in my area!   :P

I'm in western mass, and my Walmart has nothing worth buying lol. I'd be up for a road trip but I might be sleeping on that couch for the next couple days, sons birthday the 1st lol. Thanks for the info

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Looks great! I got 20 of the variable variety at Lowes last year for a couple bucks each after Halloween and the wife and I just got done carving (she drew, I carved). I put five 2811 pixels in each. What I love about your setup is that they are all sized differently. That makes a big difference (mine are all the same, which bothers me). I love the arch to, that was my plan originally after seeing someone else do something like that last year, but it's not gonna happen this year... with how awesome your setup looks, I think you can expect lots of copy cats next year... including me!

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Thanks everyone!  I have received several requests for more details pictures on how I am lighting them to how I created it so I will work on some more pictures with greater detail and a video of it in action.  

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The funkins after Halloween are reasonably priced. I get some of the .10 plans from pumpkin masters that goes on sale everywhere, I draw the pattern and use my Dremel to carve them out. The Dremel makes carving a snap.

Yeah, I have it on my radar now. It just looks too cool. And it will fit in nicely above and around my witches brewing setup. I can stick spots shooting down on the witches and fit some fog tubes in there to make it smokey.

It is gonna hurt making I fear. But plans are drawn out already.

I am a copy cat. :)

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I hate when people put things on here that are GREAT.  IT CAUSES ME TO GO SPEND MORE MONEY!!

 

Love it.  Great job!!

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