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This Halloween, don't just carve your pumpkin: Hack it.

Geeked-out pumpkins go beyond mere gourd carving to include programmable chips, circuit boards and a good bit of soldering. Some include motion sensors and solar panels. This year's hot pumpkin add-on seems to be LED lights, which are easy to stick on and give the pumpkin a cool glow.

Artistic and creative in their use of technology, the best part about these pumpkin mods are that most come with easy instructions on how to do it yourself. Look through the gallery here, then get a pumpkin and try a mod yourself.

With a bit of a hacking, a plastic pumpkin can be upgraded to have serious technology inside. A sensor embedded in the nose detects when people get close, and will play scary sounds and light up the LED when they do. Even the sounds can be customized by storing audio files on an SD card. The circuitry is based on the Arduino platform so it is easy to modify the behavior of the pumpkin, says Limor Fried, the hardware hacking queen who created the pumpkin. See how to create your own here.

Show us pictures of your geeky pumpkins. Submit photos to our contest and we'll publish the best mods in a future gallery.

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Photo: Ladyada.net