iStrategyLabs is a digital firm that develops tools and services that foster community, online and off, for big organizations — putting out social-media marketing for GE during the 2012 Olympics, a social media-savvy concert for American Eagle, and a paintball sentry drone that fires when you tweet at it.

Huh?

OK, so that last creation doesn't come with a major corporate sponsor, but rather is an internal project called "PaintBot" — a paintball rifle mounted on a tripod and rigged with an Arduino to fire whenever someone tweets the hashtag #ISLPaint."

Go ahead, try it.

Unfortunately, there isn't much interactivity in the setup yet. The team has yet to make a live video stream, so there's no instant gratification, nor a way to confirm your shot has even been fired. The inability to pan or tilt the rifle leaves no room for marksmanship. And, at last peek, a note on their site says the machine is temporarily down for cleaning.

Luckily, however, iStrategyLabs CEO Peter Corbett says their hardware hacking quartermaster is working on improvements. "What the web saw today was just the tip of the iceberg," says Corbett. Sworn to secrecy, he adds, "I can't say much more than that."

When asked if his system could one day replicate the Mythbusters' famous Mona Lisa paintball art project, perhaps by using a hashtag on Instagram, Corbett says "It's totally 100% possible. We're going to have to figure out if we're actually breaking any DC laws with the Paintbot first before we set 100 of them up in an array like that!"

The Paintbot is a fun skunkworks project, but also part of a larger series of projects that iStrategyLabs calls "Social Machines" that are meant to combine physical products with social data. \"We began building what we call Social Machines about a year and a half ago because we think social media is generally boring if it's just on the web," says Corbett. "It's much more exciting when brought into the real world to let people control what's around them."

The Social Cooler decides when the party starts.

Other Social Machines included a "Social Cooler" that unlocks only after five people check in near it on Foursquare to ensure the drinks aren't gone before the party really starts. They also worked with the Ace of Cakes TV crew to develop a cake for Ford that would read tweets through a hidden speaker at a party — quite possibly the tastiest hardware hack ever.

These projects are fun, quick, and usually inspired by some interesting hack, but Corbett believes they are an important part of his team's work. "They have huge implications for our client work," says Corbett. "The reason we built the Foursquare Lockbox originally was because we absolutely knew brands would want to engage their audiences in the real world, in new ways using social media, but those ways had not yet presented themselves."

For those who want to try their hand at making a tweet powered paintball rig, Corbett says instructions are forthcoming, after the team has had a chance to polish the design. "Paintbot was built just yesterday, in less than 12 hours, so it's a bit rough," says Corbett. "We'll want to refine it a bit before giving people a how-to guide with code. If we put the code and methods on the net right now it would just be embarrassing." iStrategyLabs has an active GitHub profile so when the code is complete, you'll find it there.

For the less technically inclined, Corbett says there are plans to commercialize these products, but it will take time. "We were thinking/hoping the Social Cooler would be able to be commercialized, but the the average cost per unit is over $500," he says. "There's not a big market for $500 coolers. If we can get that down to $99 perhaps we'd be in business. I'd like to see 2013 be a hugely experimental year where we build a half dozen more prototypes like the Paintbot and Social Cooler and see what we could actually roll out at scale in 2014."

Meanwhile, fire away. #ISLPaint

Photos: Peter Corbett

HT: Laurel Ruma