Making cyborgized spinning props

So as everybody upon everybody knows, (pobbles are happiest without their toes) some dude connect up a digital compass to a bunch of vibration packs on a belt. So that he would feel a vibration on the front of his tummy when facing north, on his back when facing south etc. He then wore it continuously for a few months.

After a while his brain began to ignore the vibration stimuli and became aware that it referenced the compass direction. He gained an 'instinctive' sense of where he was in his home city and obviously what direction he was pointed in. Just thanks to this belt.

Obviously there are other experiments with rewiring your senses to tell you dew information. Your tongue can be used as a visual sense for instance... or hearing as a visual sense also, thou that's pretty hard to do. Touch as well.

But I'm more interested in putting accelerometers in staff and poi, and gaining a sense of their rotation and movement through space. I don't really know what this would achieve but it would certainly be fun. I'm pretty sure blind balancing would become very easy.

Now, this thread is hopefully going to be about how to make a prop like this.

It might be the case that the easiest answer is to buy a couple of wii remotes and get them to talk to a belt which had vibration packs of some kind, mobile phone / childs toy / electronic component of some kind. Wiimotes are good cos they have all the tech in them already, and can communicate too, but I think it might require a lot of precessing power on the belt itself to talk to them.

The other plan is: 3 accelerometers... (thou I don't know if they measure rotation around the long axis of a staff.) and some kind of short range wireless communication to the belt. (along with a battery.)

On the belt you'd need some processor to sort out the signal from the accelerometers, as well as a way to receive it, and then route to one or a few of the vibration packs. And a battery obviously.

And then a comfy belt to wear it on, as well as a way to make sure it's always on the same place each day / practise session.

I think pic chips (or more advanced things) will come into it, but beyond that I don't know. And obviously, connecting it up to a display and making pretty pictures should be quite easy...

"the now legendary" - Kaskade
"the still legendary" - Kaskade

I spunked in my friend's aquarium and the fish ate it. I love all fish. Especially the pink ones. They are my bitches. - Anon.

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