spooky-projects

I made some arduino-powered ghosts to put in my windows

Parts List

Essential

• 1x Adafruit Metro Mini -- Compatible with Arduino Uno; any Arduino could be used but might require pin changes.
• 2x 8x8 LED Matrix with I2C Backpack -- Comes in multiple colors, but the blue can be hard to resolve from a distance.
  • Requires the Adafruit LED Backpack and Adafruit GFX libraries from the Arduino library manager
  • See this tutorial for assembling the backpack.
• Common Cathode LEDs -- Could be replaced with single-color LEDs. I use about six per ghost.

Optional

• Weatherproof Enclosure
• Push Button - Fits in one of the enclosure's openings with a little bit of reaming
• Jumper cables
• Male headers
• Protoboard

Construction

Warning About the Shape Files

The inset shapes are not sized to account for cutting kerf, so you will have to handle that. The service I used for cutting, Send Cut Send does it for you, but other services may not.

Pinouts

Each eye needs four out pins. The eyes are not individually controlled

• I2C pins (A4 and A5 on Uno-compatible boards)
• 5V pin
• Ground pin

The backlight uses four out pins:

• Red on pin 6
• Green on pin 9
• Blue on pin 10
• Ground

The push button to change the backlight color uses pins 7 and 8