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Comment by tess0r | Hacker News Reader

one of those projects is feelSpace[1] which is a belt with vibrators giving you either a new compass sense, or tells you where to go (as a navigation system).

[1] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/feelspace-follow-your-gut...

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In 1996 I was prototyping a belt with piezo transducers spaced around it with each doubling as emitters and receivers for a crude ultrasonic distance, and then each would vibrate at a higher frequency the closer the object came.

Nicknamed 'batbelt' in-house.

I dropped it after looking into insurance requirements and ADA compliance.

Did you get it to work? What was the sensation like?

Yes, and I used a Basic Stamp, and replaced it with a PIC chip later on. I had several normal issues: ignoring very close objects like your arms swinging when you walk; short postives; timing issues with getting the whole array working, since I was trying to triple use piezo transducers as emitter/receiver/vibrator. Other than those issues, it was not too refined due to the limitations of the transducers, speed of the 8-bit chips I was using, and you had to wear it within proximity of your body, but then not cover it up.

Before I ditched the idea, I was going to put the vibrator belt as a second belt worn under the clothing, but there was no Bluetooth or WiFi or easily accessible way of going wireless between the belts in a practical fashion.

I had my neighbor, blind man who had a guide dog, trial it. He was a great guy, and helped me quite a bit to 'see' past my vision biases. Unfortunately, he passed away. He used to work for the IRS, and we would joke about me getting my deductions past him! He did like what I had accomplished, but many blind people do not have the money for something that is not subsidized, and then you get caught up in the compliance insurance issues. Not sure if that has changed much nowadays.

It was a great maker project before the 'maker' movement. Too bad there was no startup, or crowd-funding web sites back then!

Thanks for the link. I have wanted one of these belts for years! But I can't believe how expensive it is.

Whilst a commercial offering is probably quite expensive, it strikes me as the sort of thing you could do quite cheaply and easily with an arduino.

I've actually been collecting the vibration motors from disposable electric toothbrushes to build my own belt; as they were designed to run form a single AA battery powering them should be easy.

Yes I've seen more open and DIY solutions. I was just hoping for a commercial version that I could buy off the shelf.

I find it quite expensive too. I guess the price is fair if you include the research they did, plus the prototyping, manufacturing and company overhead.

I've tried a prototype version of this belt once (for a couple of hours), it worked surprisingly well. But integrating the vibrations as a "new sense" into your brain (so that your subconscious can use it) takes at least some days.

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