A traditional reflex bag is meant to help improve your punch accuracy and timing. However, Carl Gordon decided to make his a bit more interactive and gamified using an Arduino Uno.

As you can see in the video below, his setup adds four LEDs to the device to tell the user which side of the bag to punch, and an accelerometer to let the Arduino in the base of the stand know when it is actually hit. This means that the person using it has to further work on his or her movement skills, adding a whole new dimension to the workout.

Gordon claims that it’s “10x more fun to use and now feels like more of a game than an exercise!” You can find out how to build your own on the project’s Instructables page.

Using several clever hacking techniques, Niklas Roy can make thermal images using a “simple” thermometer.

True IR (infrared) cameras are still too expensive for many of us, but if you’d just like to know the temperature of something at a distance, IR thermometers aren’t that costly. In theory, if you were to take readings in a grid, color code them, and overlay these readings on an image, you would have a manual IR picture. If you can accomplish this manually, the obvious next step is, why can’t a computer?

Per Roy’s clever hack, yes, this is absolutely possible. His device uses a computer along with an Arduino and two servos to trace a grid with a thermometer. It reads the display at these different points using a webcam, then resolves everything into a nice picture. When overlaid with an actual image, it becomes a low (70 x 44 pixel) resolution thermal image.

You can find out more about this project on Roy’s homepage!

A secret lair isn’t much fun if it’s a pain to get into, so Instructables user SPECTREcat decided to automate his hidden doors using an Arduino Uno. This drives four linear actuators via a MultiMoto shield, which both pull and turn the bookshelf in such a way that the books stay in place.

When opening, the doors first pull apart with one set of actuators, then turn with the other two to allow enough space for a person to pass through. Instead of drilling a hole through the maple plywood shelves, SPECTREcat chose to use a reed switch that’s activated on the other side by a magnet taped inside a DVD cover.

Beyond that, there’ s a PIR sensor that automatically closes the doors if motion isn’t detected for two hours. There’s also an emergency ingress/egress feature in the event of a power failure.

Looking for a hidden bookcase of your own? You can find more on the project’s electronics here, and see how the doors were constructed mechanically in this separate write-up.

Coffee tables are useful for putting coffee, food, or perhaps way too much junk on, but it’s 2017—we can do better than that! Akshay Baweja certainly has at least with Dot², an interactive piece of furniture that can run animations, display lighting effects, and play old-school games.

The Arduino Mega-based table features a matrix of 296 LEDs that shine up through sections of diffused acrylic, and uses a grid of foam board strips to keep each light in a square. Dot² can be controlled either by a PC running GLEDIATOR software, or via a smartphone using a Bluetooth connection and its own custom app.

The outside doesn’t look too shabby either. With an interesting wood pattern on the side, even when off it seems like there could be something more lurking just below the table’s glass!

Want to build one of your own? Head over to this incredible project’s Instructables page to get started. And, if you’d like to know more about how it’s controlled, check out Baweja’s app here or GLEDIATOR’s site for the computer software he used.

We’ve all seen geodesic domes in one form or another, whether as a modern experiment, as housing from a bygone era, or perhaps as a gigantic structure in Orlando (technically a geodesic sphere). Jon Bumstead apparently wasn’t satisfied with current dome options, and instead created his own, integrating elements from programmable LED tables to make it interactive.

The resulting build is quite spectacular. Each triangular section able to be lit up with an RGB LED, and further information is output to five MIDI signals in order to produce sound. This means that up to five people can play the dome as an instrument simultaneously. If that wasn’t enough, the Arduino Uno-based dome is programmed to play a version of Simon or Pong, and can be set up to display a light show!

I constructed a geodesic dome consisting of 120 triangles with an LED and sensor at each triangle. Each LED can be addressed individually and each sensor is tuned specifically for a single triangle. The dome is programmed with an Arduino to light up and produce a MIDI signal depending on which triangle you place your hand.

Pretty cool, right? Head over to the project’s Instructables page to see more, or if you’d like information on constructing the dome itself, check out Domerama.

Using an Arduino, Adam Podstawczynski is able to translate keystrokes on his notebook to character inputs on a C64.

If you enjoy using a Commodore 64, but either don’t like (or perhaps don’t have) its keyboard, Podstawczynski’s project could be a great solution. His build runs a Python script on a PC, Mac, or Linux computer, which maps Commodore keys to a series of binary digits. It then sends this data over USB to an Arduino Mega, which in turn uses an MT8088 crosspoint switch to interface with the mainboard of a C64, allowing for hardware keyboard emulation.

This setup can act as a simple keyboard interface from the computer, or could be employed as a macro generator for demonstration purposes. It could even enable you to input an entire BASIC program on your PC, then send it to the C64 as desired!

Check out Podstawczynski’s page for more info on this work in progress.

Whether you choose to control this vehicle with your mind or a joystick, the camera mounted on it will give you a new view of the world.

Maker “Imetomi” was inspired to create a tracked robot after he was able to salvage a camera off of a cheap drone. This became the basis of his FPV setup, which he fitted onto a little tracked vehicle. Although this would have been enough for most people, in addition to building a joystick-based controller, he also made it work with a brainwave headset.

Imetomi now has something that he can drive around virtually, spying on passersby, as long as it stays within the VR transmitter’s 50-meter range. Be sure to check out the video below, where the small bot shows of its impressive all-terrain capabilities, and read his Instructables write-up here.

If remembering to hit your foot pedal at the right time during shows is a challenge, this device will take care of it for you.

As creator Franco Molina points out, there’s a lot to worry about when playing guitar in front of an audience. Actually playing is one thing, but you have to pay attention to the crowd, move around on stage, make sure you don’t have any wardrobe malfunctions, and… hit a footswitch to change between clean and distorted channels when appropriate.

Molina’s device may not be able to help you with everything on that list, but by listing to a specially encoded ‘click track’ from a computer or MP3 player, it can automatically switch amplifier modes when appropriate. It does this by using an Arduino Uno along with an amp to listen to the track, then switch a relay to simulate a footswitch.

If you’d like to build your own, check out Molina’s Instructables project page!

A group of high school students in South Korea have created a multi-part rig that lets them play Overwatch in virtual reality.

Their console, which resembles somewhat of a Virtuix Omni treadmill, enables users to move around the battlefield by leaning in whichever direction they want to go, to fire and reload their weapon with a custom toy gun controller, and even to hit things by punching the air.

As you can see in the video below, the setup consists of a Samsung Gear VR headset, a smartphone, Arduino boards, an IMB sensor, a button, a ball bearing, a PC, a motion detection device, and a copy of Overwatch.

Although there’s a bit of input lag, it’s still an incredible project by a team of young Makers. You can read more on PC Gamer.

If you want to reach out to someone, you could always pick up your phone and send a text. But if you’re seeking something a bit more random and indirect, one idea would be to write and attach a message to a biodegradable balloon using Swiss designer David Colombini’s “poetic machine.”

Colombini’s Attachment project allows you to do just that, by dispatching digital notes, images or videos gleaned from the Internet into the atmosphere. Once the Arduino Mega-driven device receives this input, the message is laser-etched on a thin piece of balsa wood, then released into the air (though a human has to ‘reload’ after five launches). Word space is limited to a Twitter-esque 120 characters, but the finder of the balloon can access any additional content that you include through a code on the project’s website.

According to Creative Applications:

Software includes PHP / MySQL database, vvvv (take the message from web database, layout of the message, transform it and stream it to the engraver) and Arduino IDE (controlling all the mechanisms). Hardware includes an Arduino Mega, NEMA 23 motors + drivers, linear actuators, a Bambi air compressor, helium cylinder, Festo pneumatic components (helium + air valves, helium and air pressure sensors, pneumatic cylinders, DHEB) and MicroSlice engraver (based on Arduino Uno).

You can read more on this project as well as its previous version. Additionally, visit the Attachment.cc page to input your own message!

(Photos: David Colombini)