Thread: Radio Shack Talking Pumpkin Insert

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I know everyone here is always looking for new stuff to tear apart. Has anyone else picked up one of these from Radio Shack ? they are on clearance for $4.97 right now. Not sure how useful it might be, but what interested me was the fact that it uses an actual Infrared sensor. Figured that alone is worth the $4.97 . Only available in stores, and they don't seem to stock many, so I'd get them quick.



Swiss+Tech? Halloween Talking Pumpkin Insert - RadioShack.com

I got the RS guy to stash two of these for me - I'll check 'em out. Thanks for the heads-up!

So I had to tear this open and play with it. There are a few features that make it pretty cool.

1. it picks up motion in total darkness with a maximum range of about 10 feet.

2. there is about a 15 second delay after it triggers before it will go again.

3) it has a pilot led that stays on while it is idle and the main 5 LEDS come on and flash in synch when it trips.

sound is not perfect, but not bad for it's size. They did choose some weird sound files (I think there are about 10) . Amongst the typical Halloween stuff, there is a large belch and even dogs barking ?

Belching and barking? Cool. I'm picking up two of them tonight.

Thanks for the heads up, Diabolik! I picked up two of them at my Radio Shack today.
Can't beat the $5.00 price!

I played with one today. The sensor will trip whenever it sees a heat source, but the board has a lockout circuit that prevents re-triggers for ~15 secs, as Diabolik noted. The voltage output of the sensor is 2.8 - 3.0VDC. I'm going to beep out the board to find the lockout circuit and see what is used to set the time, hopefully a resistor. If so, then a trimpot could be used to vary that time period and make this thing useful as a prop trigger. Most of the parts on the board are SMT - tiny stuff, but not a problem to work with. More to come...

Cool, I am going to have to check one out.

Keep us non-techies posted please. I'd love to see what you all come up with using this thing.

I did some more playing with this thing. I isolated the PIR output and found that the PIR will "pulse" 2-3 times when the detector sees a heat source, and adding a small tube to the lens helps a lot in keeping the detection field focused. When disconnected from the board, it behaves like any other PIR detector, with no lockout time. I haven't been able to identify the portion of the circuit that diables the PIR yet.
I'm working up a controller circuit based on a 556 timer that will have two timed intervals. One interval will be for the time a prop is running, the other for the delay-after-trigger interval (PIR lockout). I'll post circuit drawings when I have the working model ready. It'll be compact and shouldn't cost more than ~$15.

More good hacking stuff found here:

Parallax Motion Sensor from Radio Shack Keith’s Electronics Blog

The Pumpkin Insert circuit may be somewhat different from the Parallax PIR board, but I should be able to find the parts that need to be changed. They should be pretty similar, as they both use the BISS0001 IC in the circuit.

I plan to drop in a 2M linear pot at R2 to see if the trigger off interval can be set to something more useful. Much easier than using the prop controller timer to lock it out, and it lets me use a single 555 IC instead of the 556. More to come...