Inspired by the “Wristify” we recently developed a simple thermoelectric bracelet of our own that can either cool or warm your wrist. Just like the Wristify, it is built around a “Peltier Cooler“. Such a Peltier Cooler fits our purposes perfectly, as on passing a current through it, the element transfers heat from one side of the component to the other. Next, we chose an Arduino Uno as the brains of our thermoelectric device, and a Velleman VMA23 Motor Shield to enable us to control the timing and strength of the heating/cooling.

Which left one tricky issue: our first experiment had already been coded in Authorware. So we still needed to find a way to communicate between our Arduino’s “brains” and the Authorware script. The most reliably option proved to make use of the “DirectCommunication Xtra“, a cross-platform Authorware plugin that is able to communicate to our Arduino through any serial port.

For those interested: see below for the source code.