Introducing a savior device for those with no sense of direction that tells you which way is north



Human society has an excellent direction indicating tool called a compass, but there are many people who would like to know direction using a method other than a compass. Recently, a belt that tells you the north direction using vibrations has been developed and released to the public.

Haptic compass belt ????

https://blinry.org/compass-belt/

This is the belt created by programmer and designer blinry. It has eight vibrating motors and a compass sensor, so no matter which direction the wearer faces, the motor in the north direction will always vibrate.



This is what it looks like when you untie the belt. At the end is a board equipped with the inexpensive Raspberry Pi model '

Raspberry Pi Pico ' and a capacitor, and motors are placed at regular intervals.



The motor is a coin-shaped vibration motor with a diameter of 10 mm, nominal voltage of 3 V, and nominal current of 70 mA.



Raspberry Pi Pico is connected to an Android smartphone via USB. Termux runs on the smartphone and outputs a signal based on the angle the wearer is facing. However, it seems that you have to hold the smartphone in your hand in order to detect the direction.



blinry commented, ``I don't have any interesting stories to share since I just built it and only took a short walk.However, I was surprised by the strength of the vibrations transmitted through the belt!''



Mr. blinry's next goals include ``guiding to specific coordinates,'' ``installing a small battery so that communication can be done via Bluetooth instead of wired,'' and ``making it unnecessary to hold the smartphone in hand.'' I am raising it.

A forum related to this article has been set up on the GIGAZINE official Discord server. Anyone can write freely, so please feel free to comment!

• Discord | 'Tell me about an episode where you had trouble with your sense of direction' | GIGAZINE
https://discord.com/channels/1037961069903216680/1156884665081286736

in Hardware, Posted by log1p_kr