A Thai pad that records and displays how hard you hit it with a strip of LEDs.

What is a thai pad?

• A thai pad is a handheld pad for kicking and punching
• However, it can be hard to guage how hard you are hitting to track your improvement

What this electronic thai pad does

• This project embedded an IMU (accelerometer) and a number of piezo sensors within a thai pad to detect the strengh of hits.
• It then uses an LED strip surrounding the pad to display visually the strength of hits
• Additionally, aim is very important, so the 5 piezo sensors, spread in a pentagon, can be used to highlight where on the pad your strike lands in order to help you center your following strikes

Why I made this proejct As a fourth degree black belt, I value every source of feedback, but objective feedback can be difficult and expensive to acquire, so this is a cheap and low cost way to acquire objective feedback on my techniques..

• I would provide a 3d model, but it would just be an image of a thai pad, this system is mean to be fully embedded. However, below is a sketch of the sensor positioning. Additionally, the microcontroller will be surrounded in a TPU case to protect it from the repeated shocks.
• Note: These are meant to be flexible as there are many variation of thai pad designs.

• As the thai pad is rather large, a PCB will not work, instead I have attached a wiring diagram.