I began fencing in my freshman year of high school, and immediately loved it. It provided a rush of adrenaline that I became addicted to, and helped my by fine-tuning my critical thinking skills. Over quarantine, I was left with a lot of spare time, so I decided to combine my passion for data with my love of fencing.
This is Gerard the fencing mannequin/practice dummy. He's been sitting in my basement for several months now.
Quarantine prevented me and my brothers from going to our weekly fencing classes, which were necessary for keeping our skills intact. In fencing, reaction is very important. A good fencer has an extremely small reaction time, but without practice, there would be no way to gauge our reaction times or progress. So, with the help of my dad, I created a practice dummy that would utilize the collection of data in order to relay reaction time back to the user.
I began to learn to code using Python and a Raspberry Pi, a minicomputer (depicted on the right). My father connected the wires for me and showed me how to code, and I delved into my work straightaway. I began by first coding a light that would be attached to Gerard's helmet to glow orange at the waiting period and green when the user should touch the mannequin with the sabre. Then, internal data tables were set up that would log reaction time results from users and code was written that would allow the reaction times to be printed on the interface after the training period was over.
These two images depict how the light was attached to the helmet. I then took advantage of the electrical connections that already existed within the fencing equipment (the clip, plug, etc.) in order to connect the lights to the fencing jacket, so that the touch of a sabre to the jacket would set off a signal to the light.
