Bluetooth 'Cuff' haptic jewellery as a stepping stone for bluetooth feedback implant?

I've had my eye on one of these little Cuff things for a while now, and it occurred to me that it could be worth looking into as a baseline for a haptic feedback implant if the coating was changed and wireless charging has improved implant-wise.

https://cuff.io/

Looks like a pretty small chip that you insert into jewellery for haptic
notification feedback over bluetooth. Neat, but still external. However,
the size doesn't seem /too/ terrible for an implant (probably after
de-shelling it and re-encasing it in something more body friendly).
According to the FAQs it uses some button presses to communicate with
the application, but until I get one in person I won't really have a
grasp of how vital that is. I'm guessing it'll be required to sync, so we'd need a remote way to trigger that OR be able to activate the button from outside the skin without it being so sensitive that it triggers with every small bump. Also, time will tell if the software will be easy to break into and piggy back off of (Or if there'll be an API for easier interfacing, if the app ever vanishes or goes obsolete.). If we're able to talk to it without the app, we could probably send all kinds of feedback to it. It also looks like it charges wirelessly. I saw a short clip of the Circadia charging
wirelessly, but I don't know how viable that would be for a once a week
chargeup of this lil thing.

Just tossing this out here as another potential tool, or inspiration to work on an implant-specific variation.

Comments

  • Well, it on its own may not have much, feature wise. At the end of the day it's really just a little chip that can be told to vibrate. Having an internal feedback component to my primary contact device and main link to the outside world (yes I half-jokingly call my phone my exo-brain) is pretty rad. But if the software can be fucked with, we could tell it to vibrate based on any kind of data, similar to the bottlenose. The sensors gathering data are just external and wireless instead of wired-to, and instead of surrounding an internal magnet with wire, the whole feedback component is internal.
  • You could always switch the pressure switch for a hall sensor switch and activate it with a magnetic implant. Just a thought though.
  • My thoughts exactly, the hall sensor seems like the best idea. Although the pressure switch is appealing, I don't think it would be a great idea, as the human body is quite squishy and tends to flex and move a lot.
  • edited February 2015
    @TimmyCNinja Did you have any problems with tissue isolation with the Circadia implant? If not, I'd imagine that you could implant batteries and modules coated in something that binds to the tissue, in a bracelet set up around the wrist or something. It'd require more than one incision, but if you spread out the components, and keep the wired (Before you shoot me for speaking of wired subdermal connections, take into account the fact that I'm not suggesting crossing joints) connections between them nice and short. Allows for bigger and more batteries, less trauma as whole for the procedure, and minimized tissue isolation.
  • So far I am finding the easiest way to activate from the outside is a tap sensor such as the ADXL345, it can detect taps @ 23 uA. As for feed back, we are building an implant called guide stone that will accomplish some of that. If anyone wants to get involved with grindhouse projects get at me. I know some people prefer to go on there own, but we are definitely looking for help 
  • Since my tablet refuses to allow me to just edit my last post, I'll put it here.
    --Addendum to my prior comment--
    By tissue isolation, I'm referring to a topic we discussed at length in my favorite thread, Implantable Armor. Essentially, Large implants have the nasty possibility of preventing nutrients and blood flow from reaching certain areas of tissue. I was wondering whether or not we had any hard information on what the threshold for that phenomena is.
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