I own one of these - bought it pre-made years ago rather than assembling the kit myself. It's a ton of fun, and really does give me a more-intuitive sense of direction. After wearing it for a while around places I go to regularly, I keep that intuitive sense of direction without having to wear it.<p>I've mostly stopped wearing it though, because it looks a lot like a GPS-based parole-monitoring device, and I got tired of questions/comments :)
> As you might have guessed by the long period with no posting, Sensebridge is out of business. We’ve been out of stock on Northpaw Kits since late 2016; we do not have plans to make more kits.
Back in 2005 my university built this as a belt and ran several studies on it over the following decade.[1]<p>It morphed into a product for the visually impaired and is still available today. [2]<p>[1] <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C34&q=feelspace+belt&oq=feelspace" rel="nofollow">https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C34&q=fee...</a>
[2] <a href="https://feelspace.de/en/" rel="nofollow">https://feelspace.de/en/</a>
IIRC Oliver Sacks was interested in this kind of thing. Think there's an episode of Radiolab where he talks about how ho used to carry around a couple of extremely strong, oblong magnets in his pockets that would stay oriented north even while he moved around. He wanted to see if his brain could learn to make sense of the input and develop a new sense, akin to the magnetic navigation that retain birds have. Not sure if he ever developed the new sense but the comments here suggest that he might have been able to.<p>Another fun fact: evidently, one third of Earth's languages (not one third of speakers mind you) do not have words for "left" and "right" and instead use cardinal terms for everything. Speakers of such languages presumably then must know their orientation at all times.
Some similar projects:<p><pre><code> - https://www.wear.works/ (for blind marathon runners)
- https://www.carlosterminel.com/wearable-compass (scroll down for various pictures)
- https://pganssle.github.io/HaptiCap/
- https://blog.adafruit.com/2020/04/08/this-haptic-compass-belt-vibrates-northward-wearablewednesday/
- https://makeitbreakitfixit.com/2016/06/22/haptic-compass-band-revisited/</code></pre>
Along these lines is an audio compass app I came across when looking for good visually impaired navigation tools: <a href="https://staging.f-droid.org/en/packages/cz.harvie.northdog/" rel="nofollow">https://staging.f-droid.org/en/packages/cz.harvie.northdog/</a><p>Really basic concept but helpful for in-city navigation for someone without sight. The downside is it works by using both channels in a stereo headphone setup, which means you are dulling your audial sensitivity to the area around you.<p>Something like this seems to be an even better concept in terms of addressing that.<p>I also wonder if this could simply be added to existing smartwatches.
I thought about building something like this about 20 years ago, but decided not to.This is actually a skill you can teach yourself if you just start paying attention. It works pretty much everywhere except for in labyrinth-like buildings. The last time I couldn't figure out which Way North was was in Lord Leicester hotel in warwick 5 years ago.
Other than the part where you'd have a battery strapped to you, this could be interesting to adapt to firefighting scenarios. If you could walk up to a structure and do a calibration so that instead of telling you which way North was it was calibrated to the direction of the face of the building (the "A-side" in most firefighting vocabs) then you could use the feedback from it when inside to know which side of the building you were facing despite being visually cut off and disoriented.
I had this same idea when I was in university and built one in my embedded systems class. It was pretty cool to use when I was on my motorcycle.<p>In addition to a north facing mode, I also added a location mode which would always point to a specified lat/lon location. This was cool for just randomly exploring while always knowing where home is.
This is some serious technology. It's not trying to sell you some junk, its just pure hardware to affect a biological response. I wonder how long the effects last? How often do you need to be wearing this thing? What about your local environment, is it more difficult to maintain a sense of north in places without a uniform, cardinal direction based street grid, or some nearly constantly visible landmarks on the horizon for example? The sun alone can't be relied upon beyond just a general sense of vague north, since it changes its course throughout the year.
I made a belt that did this while I was in college. Some pics: <a href="https://imgur.com/a/FNbtdEO" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/a/FNbtdEO</a>
Every time I read about folks surgically implanting stuff like this [1] I think... surely just wearing it would be better?<p>[1] <a href="https://www.surfacemag.com/articles/north-sense-cybernetic-implant/" rel="nofollow">https://www.surfacemag.com/articles/north-sense-cybernetic-i...</a>
I remember reading about how certain languages didn't have words for left & right, but used cardinal directions instead(0), and always wondered how they have an intuitive sense of where north is just to make themselves clear. It would certainly help to have it though.<p>(0) - ie: HokeyPokey would be a line of kids standing in a certain direction - you put your north foot in, you take your north foot out, you put your south foot in.. etc
This seems like it would be distracting when near any ferrous material? If you walk around the inside of a building with a magnetic compass, you would be surprised how often the needle deviates from North.
This is one of those things that I would love to have while at the same time know most people I know would be befuddled as to why I'd want such a thing.
Can someone help me understand what it means to develop the sixth sense for north? Does it mean:<p>a) The user must be wearing the anklet at all times to initially calibrate but their body is able to determine how much rotation / transposition they have undergone in order to point north.
b) After training, one could tell which way is north without ever having to put on the anklet again
Cool idea. I wonder if you really need all 8 buzzers. This article has a version that just buzzes when you face north.<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/06/first-humans-sense-where-north-is-cyborg-gadget" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/06/first-hum...</a>
Do these ever get confused by the things that ordinarily screw up compasses? (eg. iron deposits, power lines, metal walls, etc)<p>Firefighters navigating in smoke-filled buildings could benefit from something that helps them maintain an absolute sense of direction, but guessing that might be too hostile an environment.
Would you actually need to have the vibrating motors correspond to north to make it work? I assume that your mind would eventually map things even if it was motors vibrating at different fingertips or something else that didn't easily correspond to compass directions, as long as it was consistent.
That is a fascinating project. We were just having a discussion about this last week, how some people seem to know intuitively what direction is which, and then there's me, where I have no freaking idea what direction I'm facing unless I have a watch and can see the sun lol.
In a sport of orienteering (quite popular in Scandinavia and Switzerland) having perfect sense of the North as opposed to checking it with compass would offer a competitive advantage.<p>I wonder if anyone tried to develop that.
I remember when the Apple Watch was first released, this is how I thought directions were going to be implemented. I was so disappointed when it turned out this wasn't the case.
Or you could just follow your nose...<p><a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6823284/" rel="nofollow">https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6823284/</a>
wouldn't it be better to learn about where you are and how to find the north by looking at the sun?<p>then again, this thing could greatly teach how to do this, as long as you stopped wearing it eventually
This is a pretty old product and idk if they are still being sold, despite that page. I wonder if the thread title should include a date, and what it should be. It would be at least 5 years back.