Over the last couple of years we carried out long-term CCD monitoring of open clusters and associations with as principal goal the detection and study of pulsating stars. A by-product of this project is the serendipitous collection of multicolour photometry of most interesting compact binaries which show signs of activity, viz. variable periods and strongly variable light curves. This presentation illustrates the project, and concentrates on intriguing species of interacting binaries in NGC 6231.
