When you need a distraction, or perhaps even now, you may turn to tapping on your desk. While a good way to keep your hands active, or pass a few uninteresting seconds, if you want to get serious with your finger drumming, then the “Arduino USB Drum” by creator colonelwatch may be just the thing.

The 3D-printable device hooks onto the edge of the table, and reads taps on its pads with a pair of strain gauges. Signals are amplified and passed along to an Arduino Uno—including tap intensity—which sends MIDI data to a computer via serial. 

Code and other build info are available on GitHub, and you can see a video of it in action here.