
Am I a cyborg now? - majke
https://idea.popcount.org/2012-07-28-am-i-a-cyborg-now/
======
breckinloggins
Hacking the senses is a side interest of mine. Some thoughts and questions:

\- Do people who get these magnetic implants actually develop different
"qualia" along with their new perceptions, or do they just add different
interpretations to existing qualia?

\- With respect to this specific device, does the buzzing change intensity
proportional to the field, or is it an "on/off" thing?

\- My understanding of nerves like touch receptors is that they activate in
response to a stimulus, then send an electrical response to the brain. It
sucks that you have to directly implant these little magnets in your fingers
to get the actual stimulation. Is there anyway to wear the magnets on or
outside your skin (say, embedded in a glove) and still get the nerve
stimulation? I'm thinking of something like magnetic induction or some other
resonance effect between some target and the nerves.

~~~
sp332
You do get a different "qualia". The "northpaw" has been around for a few
years, it's a set of pager-buzzers that always buzz on the north side of your
leg. <http://sensebridge.net/projects/northpaw/> Users say they stop feeling
the vibrations pretty quickly and they just "know" which way is north.
<http://www.quinnnorton.com/said/?tag=northpaw>

~~~
token78
But does that really equate to different "qualia" or is it more like the
cognitive "shorthand" involved in the experience of driving a vehicle? Is
there a difference?

Meh, bloody semantics will get you every time.

~~~
sp332
No I think it's real. Body image is pretty plastic.

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beambot
This is called a "vibrotactile display". They've been around for quite some
time (1970s). In fact, you can make "electrostatic vibrotactile displays"
using small electrodes to deform the skin and get much higher density (ie. to
make fake, programmable textures) -- these are starting to find their way into
cellphone screens. You'll find lots of examples... usually attached to a
person's forehead, tongue, or back. Here's some more info:

[http://www.hizook.com/blog/2010/08/11/electrotactile-
arrays-...](http://www.hizook.com/blog/2010/08/11/electrotactile-arrays-
texture-and-pressure-feedback-during-robotic-teleoperation)

~~~
unimpressive
I've wondered for quite a while if this was possible.

Thank you for sharing.

------
mindslight
> _I don't know if it's legal to put a capacitor behind LM1117 regulator._

Oh gosh yes. By default you want at least a 0.1uF ceramic close to the output
of a regulator, and the additional 100uF electrolytic is good. Then since it's
a one-off and not worth worrying about, I'd put another 0.1uF close to the
input of the regulator, and another 100uF across the battery. And if you're
still having problems at that point, possibly a small resistor in series with
the buzzer to limit its inrush current. You could also replace the mechanical
buzzer with a piezo buzzer (or piezo speaker and generate tones with the avr).
(PS if you're stocking up, you might as well opt for 1uF ceramics and "low
ESR" electrolytics for these purposes)

~~~
majke
Thanks for the comment! The one capacitor I put seems to be enough for my
needs for now :) But it's great to hear what's the correct thing.

> I'd put another 0.1uF close to the input of the regulator, and another 100uF
> across the battery.

Interesting. I (naively) thought that a capacitor near a LiPo battery is
illegal as you're not allowed to charge the battery directly. I thought when
the battery power drops a capacitor will be doing exactly that. Can you
explain why that's untrue?

Update: in other words: What's the difference between putting a capacitor near
the battery and "charging"?

~~~
mindslight
Well I'll just first disclaim that I don't have any design experience with Li-
Po batteries, although reading about them I don't see any odd requirements.
The guideline to not "charge them directly" is in contrast to say lead-acid
batteries, which you can simply hook up to an appropriate voltage supply and
let them sit indefinitely ("trickle charging").

To the extent that you need to worry about it, the voltage on the two will be
the same. The battery power only drops as you're drawing current. The point of
the capacitor is to smooth out changes to the load by supplying current
"first". Your capacitor will never get "more" charged than the battery
somehow. The main difference versus "charging" is that you have no external
energy source.

From a slightly more advanced perspective, the reason for the capacitor _is_
to smooth out the (possibly bidirectional!) transient loads on the battery.
It's quite possible that your "inductive buzzer" (depending on how it's
driven) is actually backfeeding a little current through the arduino and onto
the supply rails. Your battery will never be overcharged this way because any
such energy came from the battery itself, but smoothing out the spikes with a
capacitor eases the stress on the battery. In fact, I'd be surprised if the
arduino board didn't have a decent-sized capacitor immediately on its supply
lines, and this is part of the reason.

------
lukifer
We're all cyborgs already: <http://abstrusegoose.com/171> :)

Cool project and a good read, thanks.

------
Tyr42
Did you see the NorthPaw? It's a band of 8 buzzers that goes around an ankle,
and buzzed Magnetic North as you walk around.

~~~
jokermatt999
<http://www.quinnnorton.com/said/?tag=northpaw>

Quinn Norton had a good series on it. There's also a longer talk by her about
body hacking in general online.

<http://youtu.be/voA7Uz7uABE>

It's an interesting frontier, but I don't have any good resource that has
continual updates on it. Any recommendations? The only other place I've really
seen stuff about it is BME Zine, but it's focused on BME in general, so
there's a lot more noise than signal.

------
token78
There is one technological invention, completely 'unnatural' and born of human
artifice, which each and everybody on Hacker News has internalised so deeply
that we take it for granted almost as natural thing.

It extends our capacity for information gathering and exchange, and has
extended human memory monumentally. I'm talking about writing.

Yeah, I admit it - I've drunk the Marshall McLuhan Kool-Aid. But think about
it. You have ancestors for whom writing was an alien and unfamiliar
information technology. And yet you can look at a page and suddenly be drawn
into the sensations, ideas and experiences of men and women who died
generations and continents away. All thanks to a technology that we have so
thoroughly integrated with our experience of being alive and human that it's
become second nature.

You're a cyborg already.

EDIT: Wow, I'm a little surprised I'm the first person to mention McLuhan? For
those that don't know, he's the bloke that coined the term 'cybernetics'.

------
blueprint
Get thee to kickstarter! I would so buy one of these in final form.

------
kghose
This is very cool and interesting and HN worthy. I second all the notes here
about vibrotactile displays. Please also read up about how people are
developing devices that substitute somato sensation (touch) for vision for
blind people <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_substitution>

------
ricardobeat
> I'm able to detect more sophisticated changes in the field

The magnet implant is probably way more sensitive vs this binary device, since
it's pressing your sensory receptors in your fingers; they can also sense
temperature and position changes.

~~~
majke
Okay, this might have been an overstatement. I assumed that you can't feel
static magnetic field, only changing one. Can anyone with a magnet implant
comment?

~~~
mistercow
Presumably, a magnet implant would allow you to feel a static magnetic field
by moving your hand around, since that would, from your finger's point of
view, turn it into a changing magnetic field.

------
graue
This is very cool, but I was surprised to see what seems like an obvious bug
in your code. In the buzzer() function, it looks like you were trying to use
"buzz_prev" to optimize away extra writes of 0 when no magnetic field is
detected. However, buzz_prev will never get reset because line 57, which sets
it to zero, will only be executed if (!buzz_prev), that is, if it's already
zero.

~~~
majke
Nice catch Sir! You're right, line 57 should be below 55. Fix:

[https://github.com/majek/dump/commit/7e9edeba2ead00a24341ec5...](https://github.com/majek/dump/commit/7e9edeba2ead00a24341ec5fa32d28326e7dd55e)

------
cloudwalking
Wouldn't it be easier to superglue a magnet to your pinky?

~~~
joshu
Exactly! I always wondered why nobody tried this.

Although I must admit - I grew up at a time when magnets were anathema to
using computers, and I remain resistant to having magnets anywhere near my
work area.

------
praveenpenumaka
Cant we do this with mobile application? Mobile vibrating when there is
increased magnetic field or something like that. Someone can check with sample
app?

------
ginko
Everyone wearing corrective glasses can be considered a cyborg.

------
seanx
Could you do this with a high strength magnetic ring?

~~~
iamdann
As someone with the actual implant, I'd say no.

Think of it this way, people have been wearing magnetic body jewelry as an
alternative to piercings for decades. Sensing magnetic fields has never been
associated with magnetic jewelry.

The same way that holding a buckyball between two fingers close to a fan
doesn't really create an unusual or striking response.

There's something unique about the implant that can't be replicated in other
ways. I mean, I haven't tried this external device, but the above is my
response to questions about magnetic rings, nail polish, earrings, etc.

------
ktizo
If a three axis magnetometer was used in conjunction with electrical nerve
stimulation on multiple sites, you could have the full range of compass
heading, local magnetic field density and ac field sensing. Which would be
cool.

This has probably already been covered by the NASA Human Systems Integration
Division, so it might be worth having a dig through some of their stuff -
<http://hsi.arc.nasa.gov/index.php>

I think it was some of them who are working on the subvocalisation stuff -
[http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2004/subvocal...](http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2004/subvocal/subvocal.html)
\- which is basically cyborg telepathy, near as dammit.

