If you don't know what to do with your old Nerf guns or maybe just want to upgrade them, you could always turn them into working video game controllers as Alfredo Sequeida did with his latest Raspberry Pi project.
The best Raspberry Pi projects offer more than just proof of concept, they have real-world applications. Sequeida not only transformed his old Nerf gun into a controller but successfully uses it in Call of Duty.
The project required installing a few new buttons as well as integrating existing hardware like the trigger, which was soldered to open GPIO pins. An old Android phone retrieves the accelerometer data and the Pi uses this information to determine the aim of the controller.
A custom Python script interprets the controller input, which is then translated into output for the PC. You can read more about the code in detail on the official GitHub page. If you want to see how well it works, you can check it out in action on Sequeida's official YouTube where you can also follow him for more updates and cool projects.
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Ash Hill is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware with a wealth of experience in the hobby electronics, 3D printing and PCs. She manages the Pi projects of the month and much of our daily Raspberry Pi reporting while also finding the best coupons and deals on all tech.
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alfredosequeida Great post! I can definitely see this as a way to upgrade old Nerf Guns. Someone actually told me that this could be a way to turn multiple nerf guns into the different guns in Doom (to use each one when they switched weapons). I think that might be a bit overkill but definitely proves the point lol.Reply -
Andrwensarland Wow, thanks for the post, now I know what task I will give to my kid as he is studying IT.Reply -
Jackback1980 I do not think I can handle this on my own, even though I know how to start raspberry pi on Linux, but I think it would not help me much. So I should probably ask my friend to help with it as I think it would be very interesting for him as well as he has an old automatic nerf gun which he will connect later on to his raspberry pi. When we will complete everything I will attach images later on. Hope it will happen this weekend.Reply