Halloween Flame Effect Prop

Last updated October 28, 2024

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WIP

At my choir's halloween performance, we had a prop witches' cauldron. I added a flame effect using a MagTag with CircuitPython & a NeoPixel strip.

It was pretty simple to code up and it worked flawlessly during the performance.

You could pick almost any CircuitPython microcontroller for this project; I chose a magtag because it was handy, and had an on-off switch as well as a JST connector that was easy to connect to my NeoPixel strip.

To make it more self-contained I 3D printed a little tray that would keep the battery from shifting around or being damaged. It was super easy to get the dimensions correct in FreeCAD by importing the MagTag's 3D model in STEP format.

Just for fun, I made an image for the MagTag's e-ink display with a spooky AI-generated bat scene plus arrows pointing at the charging port and on-off switch. The screen refreshes each time the main code runs.

I didn't get any video of the finished prop but I did take a short video when testing it:

This page (Halloween Flame Effect Prop) was last updated on October 28, 2024.