Playing Pong on a shoulder press machine

What happens when you give a group of engineers a motor-controlled, high-tech strength machine and 24 hours of “Hack Day” freedom? You get a 300kg game of Pong.

In this session, we take you behind the scenes of EGYM’s ecosystem to show how we connect serious sports science and arcade nostalgia. We’ll walk you through the hardware and software stack of our Smart Strength machines, proving that with the right firmware and a bit of C++, any gym floor can become a playground.

What We’ll Cover:

• The anatomy of an EGYM Strength machine: a short introduction of our hardware, what makes a machine “smart” and how it differs from normal gym equipment
• Building the Frontend: using C++ and Qt to build a functional game UI
• The hardware part: we’ll explain how we utilize firmware-controlled motors to map lever positions to paddle movement, and how we use variable torque to create a customised feel
• Networking the gyms: a look at how our machines communicate with each other and our core backend to enable real-time, head-to-head multiplayer
• How to deploy: from a “buggy” demo to a polished release. showing our CI/CD pipeline, demonstrating how we push updates to machines in the field and swap GUIs on the fly (live coding/demo effect there)
• Beyond the hackdays: our journey to production, using Pong as an example, including the vital roles of testing, sports science validation, and fleet monitoring