Nerf Gun Tracked in Virtual Reality

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Nerf Gun Tracked in Virtual Reality

Modding a Nerf Barricade into an HTC Vive tracked controller — a digital trigger wired to an Arduino gives real tactile feedback in VR.

|Aditya Bawankule
VRHTC ViveHardwareArduino

To create a more tactile interface in VR, I modified a Nerf Barricade into a tracked prop for use with the HTC Vive. The video shows it working in-game: the Vive controller is mounted inside the Nerf gun body for 6DoF tracking, and the physical trigger is wired to an Arduino that sends button signals to the PC. In the game view, the weapon model mirrors the real prop's position and orientation, and shooting it shatters white cube targets via the Exploder plugin.

The hardware build — disassembly, trigger switch, Arduino wiring — is documented below:

The finished controller
The disassembled Nerf Barricade
The original mechanical trigger replaced with a digital switch for Arduino input.
The Arduino mounted to the side — reads the trigger and reports button state to the PC.
The finished prop wired up to the headset. Future iterations will be wireless.