One Minute Punch Break

Take a Break, Let it Out

We'd probably all agree that physical release can be the most satisfying and relieving outlet when stress levels are high or a burst of adrenaline runs through our veins.

The One Minute Punch Break creates a healthy space for frustrations and pent up emotions, designed to turn tension into release and then a smile. Intended to be mounted on the walls of offices and co-working spaces, the massive button starts a 60-sec LED timer while each punch you make is reflected on the counter.

Is working from home driving you insane? Does your office need an anger zone? Or do you find yourself needing an outlet before a big presentation? This tutorial will take you through step-by step-instructions on how to make your very own One Minute Punch Break.

What you'll need

The Circuit:

• 60 LED Neopixels
• Massive Arcade Button (100mm)
• Adafruit 0.56" 4-Digit 7-Segment Display w/I2C Backpack
• Adafruit GEMMA M0
• Adafruit Feather HUZZAH with ESP8266 - Loose Headers
• BreadBoard
• Standalone 5-Pad Capacitive Touch Sensor Breakout - AT42QT1070
• Any conductive material (I used conductive copper foil sheets)
• Soldering Equipment & Materials
• Different colored jumper male-to-male wires (to connect to BreadBoard)
• Wires & wire strippers
• Micro USB Cable & 5V DC power adapter
• Electrical Tape

The Build:

• Matte Vinyl Fabric in the color of your choice - I used red (the ones you'd use to upholster chairs)
• Hot Wire Foam Factory Armor Foam 2"x14"x22"
• Matte Vinyl Stickers (cut to your design)
• Plywood backing
• BalsaFoam
• Box Cutters & Exacto Knife
• Sanding Materials
• Masking Tape
• (Optional: 3D Printed housing to surround the counter)
• (Optional: Paint + Primer Glossy black spray paint)

Make a couple rough sketches of your wall punching pad, button and counter. I had a bunch of ideas I thought of trying out, but ultimately settled on a large rectangular piece of punching foam with a center-aligned button. This proved to be the most time efficient and easy-to-engineer structure.

Overview

We have 2 circuits we are combining here:

1. Our Adafruit GEMMA will connect to our massive button and LED Neopixel strips. This activates the 1 minute timer that will be indicated by how long it takes the Neopixel strip to light up completely.
2. Our Adafruit Feather HUZZAH will connect to our Touch Sensor and LED 4-digit 7 segment display counter.

These 2 separate microcontrollers will each have their respective code uploaded, and joint together for power to run through a single DC power adapter.

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Why sketch?

Sketching your circuit out will help you visualize each item's spatial positioning within the game structure. This will ensure:

• you have long enough pieces of wires soldered
• your wires don't get tangled up later when assembling everything together

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Prep your electronics

You'll need soldering equipment, wire cutters and strippers, and all your electronic parts for the circuit ready. Be sure to have extra wires, alligator clips, and jumper male-to-male wires on hand for the breadboard and testing the circuit.

*Tip: Use same colored wires to clearly indicate your positive(Vout), negative(Ground), and Data connectors.

THE BUTTON-TIMER CIRCUIT

1. Use alligator clips to test this circuit before soldering anything.
2. Attach the Neopixels to your GEMMA (using PIN 2 or D2 on your GEMMA)
3. Attach the button and the button light to your Gemma (using PIN 1 or D1 on your GEMMA)
4. the 2 vertical switch contacts are the Button switch connectors (connect one to D1 & the other to Gnd)
5. the 2 switch contacts on the left and right are the Button LED light connectors. (connect one to Vout & the other to Gnd)
6. Once all are connected, upload the attached Arduino code "OneMinPunchBreak_ButtonTimerCode" to your GEMMA and test if it works.

• The Button LED light should be lit up the entire time, indicating power running through the system.
• When the button is pressed, the Neopixel strip should light up in red one LED each second. Once they're all lit up 60 seconds later, a short blinking light show should automatically go off.
• Press the button once more to turn the strip off.

If everything works, disconnect from power and solder your wires to secure the connection. Connect to power and test one more time.

THE PUNCH COUNTER CIRCUIT

1. Solder the 4-digit 7-segment display to the I2C backpack and the 4-pin header to the top for proper circuit connection (refer to gif & picture)
2. Using the breadboard, we will assemble our feather HUZZAH, touch sensor and 7 segment display. (refer to the photos to ensure the right PIN connectors)
3. the 4-digit 7 segment display should connect to 3V, Gnd, SCL & SDA
4. the touch sensor should also connect to positive & negative, as well as the SCK pin on the feather HUZZAH.
5. in the photos, I had 2 touch sensors (orange and yellow) connected to pin 4 and 3 of the 5-touch capacitive sensor. This is useful if you wanted 2 sensors to do 2 different things. I ultimately simplified my circuit to have just one sensor input and removed the yellow wire connected to pin 3.
6. Leave the ends of your touch sensor wires free to test if it works.
7. Once assembled, upload the attached Arduino code "OneMinPunchBreak_7segCounter" to your feather HUZZAH and test if it works.

• Each time you touch the free wire (orange) connected to the touch sensor, the counter should reflect an increasing number (refer to gif and photos)

Again, if everything works, solder your wires to secure the connection.

The 7 segment counter will be housed separately from the entire circuit, so remove the 7 segment display from the breadboard and solder wires to the bottom 4 pins of the counter and connect them to the breadboard respectively.

If you're using copper foil sheets as a touch pad, solder them to your touch sensor wire as well. (refer to gif)

Halfway there! The steps below are meant to build your product according to this specific design, however, feel free to change and improvise as you go!

1. Use a drill press to cut out a hole in the middle of the foam (for your button).
2. Using the same drill bit, cut out a hole in plywood to use as your backing to your button and save that round piece. This round plywood should fit snuggly into the hole in your foam.
3. Cut out pieces at the back of your foam to fit your breadboard and circuit wires (see pictures)
4. Make a little housing for your 7 segment counter display out of balsa foam. You can also use blue foam or any material that is easy to pierce through, sand and refine details.
5. To pierce a hole in the middle of a rectangular block of foam, use a hand drill to make a couple holes on the corners of your rectangle cut out
6. use a small blade to saw your rectangle piece out
7. sand the edges to refine
8. Optional step: 3D print a housing structure to create a seamless transition between the balsa foam and the 7 segment counter display.
9. Once it looks like everything fits well, stick them on your large plywood backing with masking tape. Start to assemble your neopixel strip around the border of the plywood and arrange your foil sheets on the left and right of your circuits.
10. Test to make sure that everything works

It's time to add your vinyl covering, spray paint and get everything put together!

1. Cut your vinyl so it wraps around your punching foam well.
2. Cut out a hole in the center so your button can fit through. I sliced the middle into 8 wedges and pushed the round plywood through.
3. Once it all fits well, use spray adhesive to glue your vinyl wrap snug and taut.
4. Remove your taped circuit and spray paint your plywood, balsa foam and 3D printed housing (if you made one) I also spray painted the button backing just to give everything a sleek look.
5. Re-assemble everything on the board
6. Print your designs on matte vinyl stickers and apply them on your vinyl-wrapped punching foam

It took hours and hours of planning, trial & error, coding and building on my end to make this crowd-pleaser so if you made it this far, I salute you!

I created this project as a commentary on how offices and co-working spaces are designed systems that hardly take into consideration frustrations, tensions and emotional relief.

Let's work together to find ways to normalize healthy release of stress and tensions in spaces that carry an unspoken rule of emotional suppression.

Take a Break, Let it Out!