Arduino is an amazing tool for Makers, and as I got back into Nerf and started modding, I began to wonder what I could do with Arduindo to help determine the effect of modifications. Take a look at any older Nerf video and you will find a kid firing darts on their lawn over a tape measure. Take a look at any recent Nerf video, and you will see them shooting darts through an expensive ballistic chronograph. Why not apply Arduino to help us with Nerf mods, both in measuring performance and in controlling operation?

Using this project to measure dart speed as an example, I looked at the effect of removing the air restrictor and adding a stronger spring to a thrift-store Modulus Modulator. Either mod by itself equated to 20 to 25% improvement. Together, however, an exponential increase of almost 80%!

The cover photo is just a teaser example of a chrongraph integrated with a barrel attachment and display. We will first focus on detection portion and get the readings on a serial console. And yes, this poor old unmodified thrift-store Recon is shooting a miserable 40 fps. Once we know what we are starting with we can start modding to see the effects . ..

There are already a number of cool projects like this out there. My goal for this one was to make it fundamental enough to understand and easy enough for a beginner to accomplish. You'll have to judge if I succeeded, or let me know how to make it better.