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Alternative implantation locations
Does anyone have any experience with implanting magnets in any place other than the fingertips? I'm curious what other body parts (and no, I'm not going to get amateur surgery done to the other obvious location) have the requisite nerve density for the magnets to work properly. I'm not so much concerned with being able to 'feel' AC fields from several feet away (although that would be cool, and I may get other ones in my fingertips for that purpose), as much as being able to feel the field of a flat spiral electromagnet that's pushed up against my skin (depending where on my body the magnet ends up, I'm thinking a maximum of about 2 inches OD for the coil, so not that strong of a field).
I apologize if I'm stealing Grindhouse Wetware's thunder; your post gave me the idea for this :)
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The lips and genitals are two other body parts that have a sufficient nerve density for the magnets to be effective. Perhaps the toes, too, but I'm not sure.You cannot feel constant magnetic fields using the implant, as far as I'm aware, you'd have to run an alternating current through the electromagnet.
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Has anything been done with knees, elbows, tongue, and feet in general?The tongue of course would be a little out of range, but hey, some people get their tongues split. As far as knees and elbows they do have a pretty high nerve density, but is it high enough? Feet in general have a high number of nerves on the bottom but the most logical place to put magnets would be the toes.
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Part of the advantage to using fingers is that you can also move your hands around more easily than any other body part, so it's easy to move them closer to the field you're trying to sense.
As for using genitals, I had an idea a while back that maybe implanting magnets in your's/your lover's lips and/or genitals would increase sensation. It's batshit crazy, I know, but it's also interesting.
EDIT: Don't worry about stealing our thunder, by the way; this forum was made to have stuff discussed on it. Also, as has been noted, static fields can't be picked up by the magnets. An active EM sensor, as has been proposed before, would be able to pick up fields much better than the passively-sensing magnets could, but the only way I can think of to pick up static fields would be a Hall-effect sensor.
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@Ian: They already do the genital magnets in the body mod scene, lol. My idea still MIGHT work -- I was planning on using PWM to activate/deactivate the coil. The way I understand it, I wouldn't be able to feel the coil when it was fully on or off -- but I might be able to feel the rising/falling edges of the magnetic field. Basically, I was trying to guess how the Grindhouse sensor widget would work ;)
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I am a big fan of the flat spiral induction coil idea for field detection. We discussed it briefly here:
http://discuss.biohack.me/discussion/207/ferromagnetic-tattoos#Item_26
If I am correct (1 in 20 chance) an induction coil produces a current when moved within static fields. This current has some advantages over the regular buzzing of a standard magnet. I'd like to do some experiments with these to see just how sensitive/painful voltage is when applied near a nerve. Also, I'm curious to see if I can force any synesthesia from the sensation. The magnet in my finger already gives me a faint sensation of texture, but that seems to go away quickly because the buzzing kind of numbs the finger. Not sure if others are experiencing this.
Does anyone have a sensitive piercing they want to try it on? I'll see if I can get an induction coil today and attach it near a nerve somewhere.
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"They already do the genital magnets in the body mod scene, lol."
Why am I not surprised?
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Just to clear up a misconception: it is possible to feel a static magnetic field, but it's a single pull, which is not all that useful, sensing-wise.
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I made a flat spiral induction coil. I hooked it up to my voltage meter and passed a permanent magnet over it an didn't get a single twitch out of it so I must be doing something wrong. Should I be using an iron core instead of an air core? Does it make a difference if the wire is insulated or not? I used about 5' of wire from a pc microphone if it matters.
Anyhow, I clipped an end in each nostril so that it surrounded a nerve that I know of. When I passed the magnet by the coil I definitely felt a "warm" sensation in my nose, followed by a change in sinus pressure. The sensation in my sinuses seemed to move with the magnet so I could tell approximately where the magnet was in relation to the coil. I'm not sure what is occurring here but it is definitely worth looking into. I'm not even pulling a voltage here so this shouldn't be happening, right?
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the observation you made are not contradicting each other.
induced voltages are very small (unless you have a very fast changing field). for most small coils you'd need frequencies in the khz region to be able to messure anything with a small handheld multimeter.
i am a bit surprised about your nose experience tho. it takes me almost 5 volt over a very small distance (between clips) to cause enough current to flow to be noticeable at all.
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This is actually backwards from what I was talking about -- I was talking about using a uC and PWM to create a magnetic field, not using a magnetic field to induce current in the coil. The idea is that adjusting the PWM frequency would adjust the frequency of "pulls" against the magnet -- which would in turn affect the perceived strength of the pull.
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I used to be able to tell the polarity of static fields with my node. It was fixed in place, so it would pull one way or the other.Why not use amplifiers? Either an op-amp, or an Analog-Front-End kind of thing, to boost the signal.
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What I'm doing isn't in line with the thread, so I'll just give 1 more update and possibly start another thread for additional updates.@ThomasEgi: It was a light tingle, for sure. The gap was only as thick as the cartilage separating my nostrils, but I felt the effect further away in my sinuses. I've done more experiments and have had the same sinus reaction. It gets weirder though. I wanted to see what a higher voltage should feel like, so I took 2 AA batteries in series and wired each of them to a nail (1 pos, 1 neg). This is only 3 volts, so I reasoned it would be mild enough. I tested the current on my tongue and it was pretty weak. I tapped the nails deep into my sinus cavity, one in each nostril. I was hoping to stimulate some kind of sinus reaction, but I didn't feel much of anything. After about a minute of nothing, I tried moving the alligator clips on the nails a little bit and then suddenly there was a jolt. I don't know if it was the jerk of my head or what, but one of the nails was flung from my face onto the floor. It was pretty intense. I've been trying to research what went wrong and I'm thinking that either it was a simple short, or there was some kind of reaction caused by my magnet finger when I tried adjusting the clips.
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