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It seems to me that the flashing pumpkin may be the electronics equivalent of helloworld.exe. I have a handbook on neon oscillator applications, published in about 1950. The last project in the book is - yes - a pumpkin with flashing eyes (scarily enough, using a 70-volt rail. I guess people worried less about such things in those days.
I had several problems starting out, none of them the fault of the kit, and I reproduce them here to encourage anyone else. If a ham-fisted duffer like me can get away with it, so can you. The programming software installed as advertised first time, which is a novel experience for those of us who use XP. I had a few problems getting the PicAxe chip into the socket, but then I soldered up a battery box, built the test circuit with an LED and 330ohm resistor and connected the serial cable. "Error, hardware not found on COM1:".
I trouble-shot everything as directed: yes, there was a battery and so on and so on. "I think" I said sadly to my wife Sue "that I've killed it".The next two days were spent working, but somewhere along the line it occurred to me to check the batteries. The NiMHs themselves were fine, but the battery box wasn't actually delivering power. After a second heart-in-mouth period when everything was working but the sunlight was too bright to see the LED flashing, I attached all the LEDS and downloaded the program. Voila.
Okay then. Procure a small pumpkin. Not a problem: we already had a huge one to go on the flat roof, something of a ritual for us. This was supplied by the long suffering Simon of Uptons, who also supplied the bones for the flute experiment. So I just nipped round and bought his smallest one. At 42p, it was the single most expensive project item, apart from the PicAxe board. I hollowed it out but instead of carving eyes and nose, I stuck a chopstick through the skin to make holes that the LEDs would fit into. And the rest is, as they say, history.
Now, fair enough, the project is a bit of a mickey-take, but I've learned a lot about productionising the equipment. I at least know what questions to ask myself when I rebuild the board to drive a revised version of Ria. Of which, more later. Oh, but waste not, want not. I roasted the seeds and the flesh will be made into a pie.
symbol cnt = b0 main: for cnt = 1 to 10 step 1 let pins = %11001111 'flash left pair pause 1000 'wait one second let pins = %00111111 'flash right pair pause 1000 'wait one second next cnt for cnt = 1 to 10 step 1 let pins = %10101111 'flash both left leds pause 1000 'wait one second let pins = %01011111 'flash both right leds pause 1000 'wait one second next cnt for cnt = 1 to 10 step 1 let pins = %10011111 'flash both outside leds pause 1000 'wait one second let pins = %01101111 'flash both inside leds pause 1000 'wait one second next cnt goto main