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NFC powered lights
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Displaying comments 31 - 60 of 122
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it's 2.4 inches long. personally I'd try to implant it by making a small cut at one end and a long pocket under the skin.
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Sorry about my late reply.
Yes, I would be honored to implant it. I think you already have my shipping address in your webshop's records, but if you need it again, I would be happy to send it.
As to implant technique, I currently agree with your proposed method. A single small cut and a long pocket. I will use a scalpel for the initial cut and primary pocket and 3" 6g piercing needle to make the long pocket. I'm thinking I will attempt it on the ventral side of my right forearm approximately midway between the wrist and elbow. The initial incision will be made nearer the elbow with the long pocket made in the direction of the wrist. I'm more comfortable with that area than I would have been in the past. That area has tissue that, at least on me, has an almost translucent quality that should help make the light more visible.
I hate to say it, but I might have to break down and finally use lidocaine for this one.
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Cool, you'll need to send me your address again, although I will have it in my site database, I don't have a way of matching forum handles to orders on the site.Yeah, no shame at all in using lidocaine, the implant procedure for this will probably take longer and be more complex than others.One thing we haven't talked about is sterilization. The silicone would be fine in an autoclave, but I'm not at all sure the electronics would survive the temperature.EO gas would be ideal, but I don't have any way of getting that done.what are your thoughts?
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do you intend on producing more of these if his tests go well?
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@ightdenmaybe, it was just an random idea to start with, and I wanted to see what people thought of it.I wasn't planning on making many of these, but it got a way bigger reaction than I expected, so yeah, if the testing goes well I'll consider making more.But it they will probably take a while, I'm spending most of my time on my other more serious projects, e.g. I've got a bunch of new NFC implants, and some other totally novel implants, ranging from purely aesthetic mods to serious medical sensor implants.
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"some other totally novel implants, ranging from purely aesthetic mods to serious medical sensor implants."you cant just say things like that and not expect to tell us more!!!
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Agreed. D:>
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haha sorry, I think it's best to wait until they are available to everyone rather than make you jealous of the couple of people on the forums who already have the the implants.
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Oh that makes it worse
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Just soak it in chlorhex or iso for an hour. Or make 2 and autoclave 1 and see if it holds up. Experiment is better than guessing.
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@chironex true, was planning to make a few anyway, will autoclave one to test it.
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I was figuring on a chlorhexidine soak, so I'm glad to see that I'm not totally off-base in that regard.
Sorry about the slow responses. Working against a ridiculous deadline on an overly ambitious software project has been eating up most of my time for months now.
I'll send a PM with my address in a moment.
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The implant arrived today! I'm very excited to get this implanted as soon as I can. The aforementioned software project is nearing completion and in about a week (I hope) I will implant it. The implantation will be recorded in 4k and made available online.
I do have a question for you, @AlexSmith. I've not yet opened up the pouch that you shipped it in, but it looks like the implant was placed into the pouch wet. There is some discoloration on that paper and the typical wrinkled look that paper gets when it gets wet in an outline around the implant. I'd post a pic but I left the implant in my office at work (I'm home now). Was the implant wet (perhaps with the saline you soaked it in) or is there some more concerning cause (i.e. something leeching out of the silicone)? I'll post a picture tomorrow.
Assuming all is well, I'm going to be purchasing a decent set of locking forceps to enable an assistant to more easily grip the skin in order to tent it up. Does anyone have a suggestion as to what variety might be best? I'm thinking about getting curved Kelly forceps, but if another variety might be better, I'd love to hear about it. Maybe @Cassox could suggest something?
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Hmmm it wasn't wet as such, but I had been keeping it in a sealed container since removing it from the saline, so it would likely not have been fully dry.
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@aviin thank you in advance for uploading the implantation video. This is an implant I'm kinda wanting to get. Not gonna find a piercer to do this for me...
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Here's a pic showing the back of the packet (click the thumb to get a larger image):
There is also a single small droplet of clear liquid inside the pouch. I'm betting it's the saline.
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yeah, looks like it was still a bit damp when I put it in
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Sorry for the long delay. Life has been in the way of things. That having been said...
I implanted it an hour ago! I didn't end up getting 4k video, but I've got stellar (and I mean STELLAR) 1080p video. I'm going to work on editing that footage this evening and hope to have it available online by sometime tomorrow. I'll have a full after-action report to go with it, too.
@AlexSmith, do you have any issue with me featuring your company logo somewhere in there? I know you aren't really selling these (yet?), but I'd definitely like to get your store some attention if I can. You're really doing a great service for this community. The video will be, um, interesting(?) enough that I suspect it'll get some hits on Youtube.
Might as well talk VERY briefly about how I implanted right now. I'm pretty damned excited about the whole thing.
I ended up doing a through-and-through with a piercing needle (a monstrous 75mm long 6g needle) as I had originally envisioned. I actually had decided against doing that, but when I opened the pouch the implant was in and actually got it out to soak it in iso, I saw how very unstiff the wire is. Ever trying to guide that thing into a narrow opening would have been impossible. It would have folded up on itself.
I had an assistant use a set of locking forceps to grip the skin of my forearm and pull it up, tenting it to make the whole process possible. Then I did the through-and-through with the needle, used a stainless steel surgical probe to try to widen the passage a bit by working it around, then used a scalpel to open up the initial entry area more to accommodate the antenna. Next, I carefully guided the narrow end of the implant into another identical piecing needle. That gave the whole thing the rigidity it needed to guide it in. I worked the whole implant into place (which was difficult as all hell even with the needle encasing it) and then pulled the needle all the way through leaving the implant behind. Some gauze and tape and it was done. I will be replacing the gauze and tape and adding some triple antibiotic after I post this message.
Oh, and I did NOT use the lidocaine. Something about using it just doesn't sit well with me personally. Please anyone reading this, don't think I would ever have a poor opinion of someone who does use it for implants (you should use it!). I've just come to consider the pain as a part of the process if that makes sense. It is part of the price for me, you know? I'm no masochist; I despise pain, honestly, even if I can tolerate it well. It just feels like it should be there. I'm probably not making sense with that. And I'm sure there are some truly archaic mental things going on that contribute to my need for these things to hurt. So, anyway, yeah, use lidocaine everyone. Please. Not using it is reckless and dangerous and dumb.
That was more than enough talk. I've got editing to do; the video will show it all quite nicely. I should say that I've not yet tried to activate the light in vivo. There is already some swelling and I know there's alot of blood loose in there that will need to get cleaned up by natural processes before the light would be visible anyway. I did confirm that I implanted it right side up, though, and near enough to the surface that it is going to be visible.
P.S. - 6g needles used in this way, while just right right diameter, are NOT at all pleasant. They're just too big. And when used as I did, they actually "cored" out some pretty big chunks of tissue. I'm not at all pleased about that. I recall @glims once urging people not to remove any of their "meats" and I agree with that wholeheartedly. And the needle(s) ended up scraping away enough tissue at the entry point that I'll have a nasty scar there. All in the name of science, though, so the price seems very small.
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Wow, that implant procedure is hardcore! I'm not sure I could have done that.yes, feel free to use my logo/link/mention whatever you want for youtube.You raise a good point about how flexible the wire+silicone is. that seems like a good think for long term implantation, but I hadn't considered how hard it would make implanting it.I've been practicing doing more silicone coating recently, and I'm getting the hang of it, to the point where I think I could make these semi-professionally if people want them. That said, how do you think I could make implanting them easier?Please keep us updated on how the healing goes, given how large the procedure was, I guess it will take a while for it to fully heal though.
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The only thing that I wished for was that it was slightly more rigid. Flexibility is good, but so much is not wonderful to implant :). And I do wonder how much flexing it will take before a break in the wire happens. Maybe there's another silicone mix that's just a bit more rigid? Or maybe even a backing material behind the whole implant that has limited but still some flex to it.
I'm already working on the video editing. I'm really torn, though, about how much editing I need to do. I do have to blur out something visually in there and edit out a couple spoken things (no, not profanity... there's a fair bit of that in there...). I originally thought I'd want to do extensive editing and entirely remove the natural audio, but after the fact, I rather like it with natural audio. It's a really fun video, honestly. I really really really like it. Runtime before intro and outro is just over 16 minutes.
Doing a more intensive implant than magnets or chips is incredibly exhilarating. I love doing it and wish I could every single day.
A quick note on pain, too. Since I do these things without anesthetic, I perhaps can offer somewhat unique insights. The process hurt, of course. Sometimes quite alot. That having been said, it hurt alot less than expected. I seem to always say this after an implant, but the thing that has caused the most pain overall was something unexpected. It is the pinching that the forceps did. I'm in a fair bit of pain right now, but it's almost all from the damage the forceps did. I clamped them down pretty tightly. Initial entry of the needle wasn't bad at all despite the large diameter. The needle exit was very painful. The scalpel was hit or miss with pain, with one moment being exceedingly excruciating.
Man, I type too much when I post. Video will almost certainly be up before I go to bed.
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There are a few options for making it more rigid. Yes, I can use less flexible silicone, I don't have any yet, but I know where to get a firmer grade. I could use thicker/less flexible wire, which would stop it bending as much. Or I could just use some PTFE shrink wrap around the wires before doing the silicone coating.
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Will these eventually be made with "cleaner" silicone molding, like a tubular shape around the wiring or something? Seems like this could be a neat alternative/addition to the Firefly implants, and by mixing the two could result in some very interesting and unique aesthetic arrangements. I actually like the more flexible design, you could (for example) have a light on one side of the arm/wrist area with the power pad on the opposite side, things like that.
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Heh. I can imagine how much fun it is to be implanted with a 6g needle... I believe the injectors for the firefly tattoos are about 6g. Gonna be fun to get that stuck in my face.
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The Firefly needles are a little smaller, about 8g, but still a long bigger than the RFID ones.
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Gah! Adobe After Effects motion tracking isn't doing well keeping track of what I wanted to blur visually and tracking it by hand through 16 minutes as I move about is no fun at all. I think the visual blur isn't going to happen. It wasn't strictly necessary anyway. So just audio editing and the intro and outro to do. It will be tomorrow before I post it, though, because I want someone else who was there to have a look at it to make sure the audio edits are enough.
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Final rendering of the video is taking place now. Total run time is 18 minutes, 17 seconds. Hopefully I will post a link here to it tomorrow afternoon. Apologies in advance for the offensive language and if I offend anyone in it. It's a fun video, though. I'm not at all displeased with the footage.
As a sneak peek, and because I didn't include it in the video, here is a pic of the tissue I ultimately removed from the two needles after the implantation was done. Those needles work like dermal punches :(.
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I think you deserve a few choice words after the 6g hole punch. Can't wait!
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//We at biohack.me do not support or suggest the act of self mutilation or injury for any reason. The information seen here should be used for educational use only, and not be recreated. Do not do this.// ^^ I guess you could say you're pretty... Holy... he he he... x3 (You can kill me now)
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An update:
There is a fair bit of swelling. Nothing worrying, I don't think, though. Pain has reduced quite alot but it is still tender (obviously). I've been loathe to mess about too much with the area, so there's still dried blood around the wounds, particularly the exit point. I'll likely use some isopropyl alcohol here in a bit to remove that blood. The large streak of redness caused by by gripping the skin multiple times with the forceps is pretty much gone.
The exit wound looks in far better shape than the entry wound. There's a missing chuck of flesh at that entry point. It looks healthy, though, so that's good. I'll post a couple of pics at the end of this message.
I do need some advice. How long should I wait, do you think, before letting these things get some air? I know everyone always says keep things moist, but I really would like to see that entry wound scab over and that isn't going to happen if I keep it moist with bandages and triple antibiotic.
Oh... And I should mention... Even with the swelling and collected blood, the light is plainly visible now when I apply NFC signal. If anything, it seems MORE visible under the skin than it did before implantation. It illuminates the tissue around it with a nice red glow. So, if nothing else, I can say the implant concept is sound and it does function well in vivo.
The video was uploaded late last night and I'm waiting back for a response from another person who was there as to whether or not it'll be okay without the blur. And I realized there's a typo in it, which makes me very unhappy but considering how long it took to upload on my slow internet connection, I am not going to fix that. I'm going to PM @AlexSmith a link right after I send this message. I don't want it widely shared yet, but he deserves to see it as soon as he can.
Here are a couple pics of the site today:
Entry wound
Exit wound
Displaying comments 31 - 60 of 122