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Comment by filoeleven | Hacker News Reader

I read years ago about an anklet that contained 16 tiny vibrating motors, and whichever one was north facing at any given moment would pulse rhythmically. Wearing this device for a few days resulted in the conscious signal fading, but a wild increase in the accuracy of the wearer’s mental mapping and navigation abilities.

Seems like a fun thing to try out, and probably simple to build.

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There was an interesting experiment about this, and about the effects when you stopped wearing it (people's internal navigation systems took a serious hit). [1]

[1] - https://www.wired.com/2007/04/esp/

I knew about the feelSpace belt already but this was a very interesting read and a lot broader than I had expected it to be. Do you want to submit the article here? You would have my upvote right away.

I have submitted it myself now. I hope you don't mind.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22393300

Oof, I don’t know if I like the idea of losing my existing navigation abilities. Maybe I won’t mess with that! I wonder if it would be useful for people with Developmental Topographical Disorientation though:

> she could only take jobs that allowed her to commute entirely along straight roads (even curvature threw her off), and after-work happy hours at new bars were out of the question. Others with the condition say it’s like being a perpetual tourist in places that should be familiar. People with DTD can still theoretically understand verbal directions, read maps, and use GPS, though with difficulty; Roseman said that trying to understand GPS directions while driving is too overwhelming for her.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/05/when-the-...

The one I've had on my radar is called North Paw[1] (from 2009, five years after rincebrain's article). It's been on my list of things to try for a while. But that build is 10 years old now and as a result it's huge—it looks like a house-arrest ankle bracelet.

We've been through a decade of electronics miniaturization since then (thanks to cell phones), so I feel like it should be possible to make it more discreet. Does anyone know of an updated build? I'm an amateur when it comes to electronics so I could use any help I can get.

[1]: https://sensebridge.net/projects/northpaw/

the BBC microbit has a compass built in, and you can program it easily in python. shouldn't be too hard to hook it up to some of these motors (https://www.adafruit.com/product/1201) to do what you want.

I suppose a relatively easy way to get something similar is an app that tracks your movement and causes the phone to vibrate the more directly north you are moving? Or perhaps different 'rhythms' depending on whether you're facing north or south.

It's not quite the same, but it would be easy to make such an app and I suspect our brains will still be able to use the information as we get used to it.

Not sure how it would impact battery life though...

Wait, why not just look at the sun (or more accurately, the shadows it casts) during the day and memorize the direction landmarks/geographic features face?

This is what I do and it almost always works unless I go to a new place at night.

I use Direct TV dishes as they are aligned generally south, assuming I can find them while travelling.

That’s a very good trick, I’m disappointed I didn’t think to do that.

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