AirBenders | Devpost

Inspiration

All of us enjoy DJing as a hobby. However, we had to pay a lot of money to buy the expensive hardware, software, and a license to enjoy our hobby. We wanted to create a similar experience for free without the need to buy any expensive software or hardware! We wanted to give others the chance to be introduced to DJing and explore their interests.

What it does

AirBenders lets users mix, manipulate, and play music tracks entirely with hand gestures: Pinch gesture: Load and play/pause tracks Claw gesture: Control deck volume in real-time Jog wheels: Scrub and scratch tracks for creative mixing Visualizer: See the music in motion with real-time frequency animations Song list: Browse and load tracks with simple gestures

How we built it

We used a combination of Python libraries and custom modules to bring this experience to life: OpenCV – For video capture and drawing UI overlays MediaPipe – Real-time hand and finger tracking pygame – Music playback and control Gesture detection algorithms: pinch for play/load, five-finger claw for volume

Challenges we ran into

Accurate hand detection: Ensuring gestures were recognized reliably across different lighting and hand positions Mapping gestures to UI: Making gestures intuitive while avoiding accidental triggers Simultaneous multi-hand tracking: Left and right hands needed to independently control different decks Visualizer performance: Real-time audio visualizations had to run smoothly alongside hand tracking

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Successfully created a fully functional gesture-controlled DJ app Implemented independent volume control for each deck using the five-finger claw gesture Designed an intuitive, visual feedback system showing finger positions and active gestures Built a modular codebase ready for future enhancements like AI-assisted auto-mixing

What we learned

How to integrate computer vision with interactive applications Advanced gesture recognition and mapping to real-time controls Real-time audio handling and visualization in Python How to design modular, hackathon-ready code under time constraints

What's next for AirBenders

AI-assisted auto-mixing and beat matching Recording and exporting DJ sets for sharing Crossfader implementation for smoother transitions Custom user sound effects (SFX) and enhanced visualizations