11 ms·

North Paw

350 points by noja 4y ago

doctoboggan 4y ago
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. 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.
- asdff 4y ago
  I wonder what else you can trigger like this to get a sense of something? Like having it buzz when you are near a taco stand, maybe that would give you a sense for finding nearby tacos over time through some latent factors that are common between taco stands? Probably a more useful case than the taco stands would be having it buzz some time before it rains. Then you can really develop that sense of feeling weather come "through your bones."
dools 4y ago
But can I reprogram it to sense sunshrooms?
asdff 4y ago
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.
vyrotek 4y ago
Cool idea. I wonder if you really need all 8 buzzers. This article has a version that just buzzes when you face north. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/06/first-humans-sense-where-north-is-cyborg-gadget https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/06/first-hum...
Invictus0 4y ago
I made a belt that did this while I was in college. Some pics: https://imgur.com/a/FNbtdEO https://imgur.com/a/FNbtdEO
- sparrish 4y ago
  Much better design and you don't look like a criminal that has to wear a lo-jack.
- _Microft 4y ago
  Great thing! If you want to revisit this project: you can get PCBs made with e.g. JLCPCB, PCBWay, OSHpark or others for a just a few dollars plus shipping now. That might help with the rats nest of cables that you had in that box.
paxys 4y ago
Cool idea, but at that price point I'd expect a smart watch or band rather than a bulky house-arrest ankle monitor.
aidenn0 4y ago
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.
elric 4y ago
I'm pretty sure Lepht Anonym at one point was working on an implantable version of this.
- zxexz 4y ago
  That's the first thing I thought of! I'm pretty sure the South Paw was inspired by the North Paw.
soperj 4y ago
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. (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
- ZetaZero 4y ago
  Some places have geographic features that make the cardinals easy. Like in Denver, the mountains are always west.
- irrational 4y ago
  The two main ways are based on geographical landmarks (west is towards the ocean, south is towards the desert, north is downriver, etc.) and the other is based on the sun/moon. East is the direction the sun/moon rises and west is the direction the sun/moon sets. One of the fascinating things I learned about antiquity is they would often orient their maps so east (the direction of the rising sun) was at the top of the map. They didn’t have magnetic compasses so there wasn’t anything special about north to cause them to orient their maps in that direction.
writeslowly 4y ago
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.
antimatter15 4y ago
I wonder if it'd be possible to build a more compact and power efficient version of this using electrostatics on a flexible PCB
noja 4y ago
Some similar projects: - 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/
- _Microft 4y ago
  The indentation prevents the adresses being turned into links. Here are links: https://www.wear.works/ https://www.wear.works/ (for blind marathon runners) https://www.carlosterminel.com/wearable-compass https://www.carlosterminel.com/wearable-compass (scroll down for various pictures) https://pganssle.github.io/HaptiCap/ https://pganssle.github.io/HaptiCap/ https://blog.adafruit.com/2020/04/08/this-haptic-compass-belt-vibrates-northward-wearablewednesday/ https://blog.adafruit.com/2020/04/08/this-haptic-compass-bel... https://makeitbreakitfixit.com/2016/06/22/haptic-compass-band-revisited/ https://makeitbreakitfixit.com/2016/06/22/haptic-compass-ban...
grnmamba 4y ago
It looks like an electronic shackle offenders under house arrest get
- an_aparallel 4y ago
  agreed - and rather bulky, the ergonomics look terrible. A bit sad - as my Sense of Direction is bloody aweful. i'd love to improve at this skill...
staplung 4y ago
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. 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.
- kelnos 4y ago
  > 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. Huh, interesting. Do you know if they actually do know their orientation at all times, or is it just that "west" is always "left" and "east" is always "right", regardless of absolute orientation?
  - jackbravo 4y ago
    From my own experience I would guess they know their orientation at all times. In Guadalajara, Mexico, where I live. I've seen it first hand. People of certain age that lived near the center of the city use an absolute system for navigating the city, and to give directions on how to get to places with phrases like "up the river", "down the river", of an old river no longer existent that used to pass through the center of the city. And they always know which way goes to the center of the city, even when going outside the city center and to unknown neighborhoods. My father is one of such people.
- ok_dad 4y ago
  In Hawaii people still use "mauka" (towards the mountains) and "makai" (towards the ocean) to describe where they are, so you might say, "it's on the makai side of downtown," to describe an area or, "go mauka from the intersection" to indicate a directional vector. They also use "windward" and "leeward" to describe sides of the island sometimes, and will give you directions from local landmarks (Zippy's is a good one, everyone tends to know where those are, or they can see the orange sign easily) to other locations.
BeefWellington 4y ago
Along these lines is an audio compass app I came across when looking for good visually impaired navigation tools: https://staging.f-droid.org/en/packages/cz.harvie.northdog/ https://staging.f-droid.org/en/packages/cz.harvie.northdog/ 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. Something like this seems to be an even better concept in terms of addressing that. I also wonder if this could simply be added to existing smartwatches.
- ok_dad 4y ago
  > dulling your audial sensitivity to the area around you Many headphones have a feature where they pass-thru the external audio, so perhaps you could use that with this as an audio overlay.
dugmartin 4y ago
Or you could just follow your nose... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6823284/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6823284/
amanj41 4y ago
Can someone help me understand what it means to develop the sixth sense for north? Does it mean: 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
- kag0 4y ago
  It's A But once users spend a lot of time in an area wearing the device, they have a better ability to navigate that area even with the device removed. I imagine it's similar to how you would be able to navigate your home in low light
- loa_in_ 4y ago
  Maybe not forever, without ever putting it on, but you got it right in general.
- ranger207 4y ago
  It's probably B. I have a fairly intuitive sense for north even without ever using this, although it does get confused sometimes. I've learned not to trust it coming out of the subway into tall buildings with narrow streets because more often than not I'll start heading a completely different direction than the way I wanted to go. I can see how this would help develop that sense, and I wonder if I'd have more success if I tried it
wanderingstan 4y ago
Back in 2005 my university built this as a belt and ran several studies on it over the following decade.[1] It morphed into a product for the visually impaired and is still available today. [2] [1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C34&q=feelspace+belt&oq=feelspace https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C34&q=fee... [2] https://feelspace.de/en/ https://feelspace.de/en/
- shard 4y ago
  Unfortunately at €2300, this isn't something that people who want to try learning absolute direction sense can purchase without much thought. I suppose the high price is due to having to pass certification as a medical device?
kuboble 4y ago
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. I wonder if anyone tried to develop that.
- progre 4y ago
  Direction is the easy part. Good runners will have the planed route memorized by the time they start, they have 60 seconds to do this. The competetive advantage in orienteering is stamina.
lhnz 4y ago
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.
- AceJohnny2 4y ago
  Problem with a Watch is that, as your swing and twist your arm as you're walking or holding anything, its cardinal orientation can vary wildly.
ehxor 4y 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.
HardwareLust 4y ago
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.
slyrus 4y ago
A slightly modified version of this would be super handy for OTB chess games!
throwaway81523 4y ago
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.
hidelooktropic 4y ago
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.
authpor 4y ago
wouldn't it be better to learn about where you are and how to find the north by looking at the sun? then again, this thing could greatly teach how to do this, as long as you stopped wearing it eventually
stevage 4y ago
It would be more useful configured for true north rather than magnetic north.
rkagerer 4y ago
Do these ever get confused by the things that ordinarily screw up compasses? (eg. iron deposits, power lines, metal walls, etc) 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.
jamesgill 4y ago
To find North in the Northern Hemisphere, all you need is 10 seconds and a wristwatch.
williamscales 4y ago
Does anyone know of a Garmin Connect app that does this? Seems like a fascinating thing to try out.
luxuryballs 4y ago
Would be cool to link it to your phone and drop a pin on the map and have it orient you towards towards the pin.
hoseja 4y ago
Do you people not have an innate sense of direction?
- throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
  I guess not! I find it strange too. I always know what the cardinal directions are, unless I'm in a subway.
ben_pfaff 4y ago
I bet you could build something like this as a pair of earrings.
mabbo 4y ago
> 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.
- kelnos 4y ago
  On their downloads page[0] it looks like they have CAD files for the board and a BOM for the components. Probably wouldn't be too hard (or expensive) to have a few boards fabricated by PCBWay or OSHPark. I imagine the enclosure could be 3D printed, though I don't see any CAD files for that. And not sure how easy it'd be to source the other components, especially with all the component shortages these days. But I imagine it'd be possible to resurrect the project, and given that they're not in business anymore, they might be willing to share more information with anyone interested (like CAD files for the enclosure, or specifics on where they sourced the components). [0] https://sensebridge.net/projects/northpaw/northpaw-downloads/ https://sensebridge.net/projects/northpaw/northpaw-downloads...
  - unwind 4y ago
    The board seems to be 100x80 mm and two layers. The low-cost services don't seem able to directly eat Eagle-format files, so I could only price it on Eurocircuits [1] where it came out to €50+ which seems like a lot. Strange for an open project to publish in a proprietary format. [1]: https://be.eurocircuits.com https://be.eurocircuits.com
    - _Microft 4y ago
      It looks like the files are in an older, binary Eagle file format. Importing it into a newer version of Eagle and saving it in an XML format would be the first step. After that, KiCad might be able to open the files if you prefer an open-source tool. From that you could export Gerber files for the fabrication houses. A board of that size with just two layers should be $2 + shipping for five boards with e.g. JLCPCB. A bit more if you want to go lead-free.
googlryas 4y ago
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.
- ok_dad 4y ago
  You can teach yourself a lot of "sixth senses" if you try hard enough! When I was in the Navy as an Officer of the Deck (OOD), I used to be able to visually measure distances on flat water in the range of ~500 yards to a mile within a few tens of yards because I had an internal sense of how big objects were and how they would look at those ranges. This was because I constantly had to measure ranges on radars and via moboards[0] when I was a OOD-in-training and so I learned quickly how to measure distances visually. I also learned how to estimate how a ship was moving in ports and transit canals and how to adjust that using engines simply by looking around, much like you can adjust how you walk on a surface depending on senses from your whole body about what type of surface it is, how stable it is, etc. On gravel, most people can sense a bit of slippage as they walk from their feet, they might sense their body alignment from feet to head moving slightly due to that slippage, etc. and all those senses are used to tell "I need to slow down here" or whatever. For ships, you get an idea for what direction the bow and stern are moving, how they relate to your control angles, how that relates to what you see around you, and also integrates your body senses, because your body is a finely-tuned acceleration sensing machine. Anyways, I wish I were still an OOD today, because I would try and create some tools like this that would help me there. Even this anklet itself would have been helpful when I was on duty, to tell me when the helmsman was asleep! [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuvering_board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuvering_board
  - kelnos 4y ago
    Whoa, this is really cool! > For ships, you get an idea for what direction the bow and stern are moving I wouldn't've thought of this, but of course that's critical to know on a ship. And it's certainly something outside of standard human experience, since we're small enough in that dimension to not have to worry about the difference in movement between our front and rear sides. The fact that you were able to gain an intuitive feel for this highlights how adaptable the human brain is.
maliker 4y ago
Every time I read about folks surgically implanting stuff like this [1] I think... surely just wearing it would be better? [1] https://www.surfacemag.com/articles/north-sense-cybernetic-implant/ https://www.surfacemag.com/articles/north-sense-cybernetic-i...
- aryamaan 4y ago
  Where are they being sold? Could not find them at the company's website.
  - tao_oat 4y ago
    IIRC they discontinued them in favor of the sentero, which just straps onto your arm with velcro (but it looks like they also aren't selling that at the moment).
isaacdl 4y ago
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. 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 :)
- bentcorner 4y ago
  I was thinking the same thing (as in this resembles a GPS ankle-bracelet). It sounds like the original research used a belt, which to me sounds like a more subtle device to wear: > The original idea for North Paw comes from research done at University of Osnabrück in Germany. In this study, rather than an anklet, the researchers used a belt. They wore the belt non-stop for six weeks, and reported successive stages of integration.
  - smnrchrds 4y ago
    I feel like a wired belt would raise even more troublesome questions. This situation will be more likely with a belt than an anklet: https://www.dw.com/en/radiation-student-raises-fake-bomb-alert-in-brussels/a-19415441 https://www.dw.com/en/radiation-student-raises-fake-bomb-ale...
- etrautmann 4y ago
  I'm curious how well oriented you felt before. I currently always feel like I can point to north no matter what, so I'm wondering if I'd benefit from this or not? I suppose those abilities get worse when I'm not in a city with an aligned grid or inside a building, like hiking on a trail where you can't see the sun. Still, I'm not sure what I'd gain from this and curious if there's a next level of awareness to attain.
  - foobarian 4y ago
    I'll venture a guess that you played a lot of video games with minimaps in your time :-)

350 points by noja 4y ago

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. 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.

asdff 4y ago
I wonder what else you can trigger like this to get a sense of something? Like having it buzz when you are near a taco stand, maybe that would give you a sense for finding nearby tacos over time through some latent factors that are common between taco stands? Probably a more useful case than the taco stands would be having it buzz some time before it rains. Then you can really develop that sense of feeling weather come "through your bones."

dools 4y ago

But can I reprogram it to sense sunshrooms?

asdff 4y ago

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.

vyrotek 4y ago

Cool idea. I wonder if you really need all 8 buzzers. This article has a version that just buzzes when you face north. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/06/first-humans-sense-where-north-is-cyborg-gadget https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/06/first-hum...

Invictus0 4y ago

I made a belt that did this while I was in college. Some pics: https://imgur.com/a/FNbtdEO https://imgur.com/a/FNbtdEO

sparrish 4y ago
Much better design and you don't look like a criminal that has to wear a lo-jack.
_Microft 4y ago
Great thing! If you want to revisit this project: you can get PCBs made with e.g. JLCPCB, PCBWay, OSHpark or others for a just a few dollars plus shipping now. That might help with the rats nest of cables that you had in that box.

paxys 4y ago

Cool idea, but at that price point I'd expect a smart watch or band rather than a bulky house-arrest ankle monitor.

aidenn0 4y ago

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.

elric 4y ago

I'm pretty sure Lepht Anonym at one point was working on an implantable version of this.

zxexz 4y ago
That's the first thing I thought of! I'm pretty sure the South Paw was inspired by the North Paw.

soperj 4y ago

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. (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

ZetaZero 4y ago
Some places have geographic features that make the cardinals easy. Like in Denver, the mountains are always west.
irrational 4y ago
The two main ways are based on geographical landmarks (west is towards the ocean, south is towards the desert, north is downriver, etc.) and the other is based on the sun/moon. East is the direction the sun/moon rises and west is the direction the sun/moon sets. One of the fascinating things I learned about antiquity is they would often orient their maps so east (the direction of the rising sun) was at the top of the map. They didn’t have magnetic compasses so there wasn’t anything special about north to cause them to orient their maps in that direction.

writeslowly 4y ago

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.

antimatter15 4y ago

I wonder if it'd be possible to build a more compact and power efficient version of this using electrostatics on a flexible PCB

noja 4y ago

Some similar projects: - 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/

_Microft 4y ago
The indentation prevents the adresses being turned into links. Here are links: https://www.wear.works/ https://www.wear.works/ (for blind marathon runners) https://www.carlosterminel.com/wearable-compass https://www.carlosterminel.com/wearable-compass (scroll down for various pictures) https://pganssle.github.io/HaptiCap/ https://pganssle.github.io/HaptiCap/ https://blog.adafruit.com/2020/04/08/this-haptic-compass-belt-vibrates-northward-wearablewednesday/ https://blog.adafruit.com/2020/04/08/this-haptic-compass-bel... https://makeitbreakitfixit.com/2016/06/22/haptic-compass-band-revisited/ https://makeitbreakitfixit.com/2016/06/22/haptic-compass-ban...

grnmamba 4y ago

It looks like an electronic shackle offenders under house arrest get

an_aparallel 4y ago
agreed - and rather bulky, the ergonomics look terrible. A bit sad - as my Sense of Direction is bloody aweful. i'd love to improve at this skill...

staplung 4y ago

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. 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.

kelnos 4y ago
> 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. Huh, interesting. Do you know if they actually do know their orientation at all times, or is it just that "west" is always "left" and "east" is always "right", regardless of absolute orientation?
- jackbravo 4y ago
  From my own experience I would guess they know their orientation at all times. In Guadalajara, Mexico, where I live. I've seen it first hand. People of certain age that lived near the center of the city use an absolute system for navigating the city, and to give directions on how to get to places with phrases like "up the river", "down the river", of an old river no longer existent that used to pass through the center of the city. And they always know which way goes to the center of the city, even when going outside the city center and to unknown neighborhoods. My father is one of such people.
ok_dad 4y ago
In Hawaii people still use "mauka" (towards the mountains) and "makai" (towards the ocean) to describe where they are, so you might say, "it's on the makai side of downtown," to describe an area or, "go mauka from the intersection" to indicate a directional vector. They also use "windward" and "leeward" to describe sides of the island sometimes, and will give you directions from local landmarks (Zippy's is a good one, everyone tends to know where those are, or they can see the orange sign easily) to other locations.

BeefWellington 4y ago

Along these lines is an audio compass app I came across when looking for good visually impaired navigation tools: https://staging.f-droid.org/en/packages/cz.harvie.northdog/ https://staging.f-droid.org/en/packages/cz.harvie.northdog/ 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. Something like this seems to be an even better concept in terms of addressing that. I also wonder if this could simply be added to existing smartwatches.

ok_dad 4y ago
> dulling your audial sensitivity to the area around you Many headphones have a feature where they pass-thru the external audio, so perhaps you could use that with this as an audio overlay.

dugmartin 4y ago

Or you could just follow your nose... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6823284/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6823284/

amanj41 4y ago

Can someone help me understand what it means to develop the sixth sense for north? Does it mean: 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

kag0 4y ago
It's A But once users spend a lot of time in an area wearing the device, they have a better ability to navigate that area even with the device removed. I imagine it's similar to how you would be able to navigate your home in low light
loa_in_ 4y ago
Maybe not forever, without ever putting it on, but you got it right in general.
ranger207 4y ago
It's probably B. I have a fairly intuitive sense for north even without ever using this, although it does get confused sometimes. I've learned not to trust it coming out of the subway into tall buildings with narrow streets because more often than not I'll start heading a completely different direction than the way I wanted to go. I can see how this would help develop that sense, and I wonder if I'd have more success if I tried it

wanderingstan 4y ago

Back in 2005 my university built this as a belt and ran several studies on it over the following decade.[1] It morphed into a product for the visually impaired and is still available today. [2] [1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C34&q=feelspace+belt&oq=feelspace https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C34&q=fee... [2] https://feelspace.de/en/ https://feelspace.de/en/

shard 4y ago
Unfortunately at €2300, this isn't something that people who want to try learning absolute direction sense can purchase without much thought. I suppose the high price is due to having to pass certification as a medical device?

kuboble 4y ago

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. I wonder if anyone tried to develop that.

progre 4y ago
Direction is the easy part. Good runners will have the planed route memorized by the time they start, they have 60 seconds to do this. The competetive advantage in orienteering is stamina.

lhnz 4y ago

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.

AceJohnny2 4y ago
Problem with a Watch is that, as your swing and twist your arm as you're walking or holding anything, its cardinal orientation can vary wildly.

ehxor 4y 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.

HardwareLust 4y ago

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.

slyrus 4y ago

A slightly modified version of this would be super handy for OTB chess games!

throwaway81523 4y ago

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.

hidelooktropic 4y ago

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.

authpor 4y ago

wouldn't it be better to learn about where you are and how to find the north by looking at the sun? then again, this thing could greatly teach how to do this, as long as you stopped wearing it eventually

stevage 4y ago

It would be more useful configured for true north rather than magnetic north.

rkagerer 4y ago

Do these ever get confused by the things that ordinarily screw up compasses? (eg. iron deposits, power lines, metal walls, etc) 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.

jamesgill 4y ago

To find North in the Northern Hemisphere, all you need is 10 seconds and a wristwatch.

williamscales 4y ago

Does anyone know of a Garmin Connect app that does this? Seems like a fascinating thing to try out.

luxuryballs 4y ago

Would be cool to link it to your phone and drop a pin on the map and have it orient you towards towards the pin.

hoseja 4y ago

Do you people not have an innate sense of direction?

throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
I guess not! I find it strange too. I always know what the cardinal directions are, unless I'm in a subway.

ben_pfaff 4y ago

I bet you could build something like this as a pair of earrings.

mabbo 4y ago

> 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.

kelnos 4y ago
On their downloads page[0] it looks like they have CAD files for the board and a BOM for the components. Probably wouldn't be too hard (or expensive) to have a few boards fabricated by PCBWay or OSHPark. I imagine the enclosure could be 3D printed, though I don't see any CAD files for that. And not sure how easy it'd be to source the other components, especially with all the component shortages these days. But I imagine it'd be possible to resurrect the project, and given that they're not in business anymore, they might be willing to share more information with anyone interested (like CAD files for the enclosure, or specifics on where they sourced the components). [0] https://sensebridge.net/projects/northpaw/northpaw-downloads/ https://sensebridge.net/projects/northpaw/northpaw-downloads...
- unwind 4y ago
  The board seems to be 100x80 mm and two layers. The low-cost services don't seem able to directly eat Eagle-format files, so I could only price it on Eurocircuits [1] where it came out to €50+ which seems like a lot. Strange for an open project to publish in a proprietary format. [1]: https://be.eurocircuits.com https://be.eurocircuits.com
  - _Microft 4y ago
    It looks like the files are in an older, binary Eagle file format. Importing it into a newer version of Eagle and saving it in an XML format would be the first step. After that, KiCad might be able to open the files if you prefer an open-source tool. From that you could export Gerber files for the fabrication houses. A board of that size with just two layers should be $2 + shipping for five boards with e.g. JLCPCB. A bit more if you want to go lead-free.

googlryas 4y ago

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.

ok_dad 4y ago
You can teach yourself a lot of "sixth senses" if you try hard enough! When I was in the Navy as an Officer of the Deck (OOD), I used to be able to visually measure distances on flat water in the range of ~500 yards to a mile within a few tens of yards because I had an internal sense of how big objects were and how they would look at those ranges. This was because I constantly had to measure ranges on radars and via moboards[0] when I was a OOD-in-training and so I learned quickly how to measure distances visually. I also learned how to estimate how a ship was moving in ports and transit canals and how to adjust that using engines simply by looking around, much like you can adjust how you walk on a surface depending on senses from your whole body about what type of surface it is, how stable it is, etc. On gravel, most people can sense a bit of slippage as they walk from their feet, they might sense their body alignment from feet to head moving slightly due to that slippage, etc. and all those senses are used to tell "I need to slow down here" or whatever. For ships, you get an idea for what direction the bow and stern are moving, how they relate to your control angles, how that relates to what you see around you, and also integrates your body senses, because your body is a finely-tuned acceleration sensing machine. Anyways, I wish I were still an OOD today, because I would try and create some tools like this that would help me there. Even this anklet itself would have been helpful when I was on duty, to tell me when the helmsman was asleep! [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuvering_board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuvering_board
- kelnos 4y ago
  Whoa, this is really cool! > For ships, you get an idea for what direction the bow and stern are moving I wouldn't've thought of this, but of course that's critical to know on a ship. And it's certainly something outside of standard human experience, since we're small enough in that dimension to not have to worry about the difference in movement between our front and rear sides. The fact that you were able to gain an intuitive feel for this highlights how adaptable the human brain is.

maliker 4y ago

Every time I read about folks surgically implanting stuff like this [1] I think... surely just wearing it would be better? [1] https://www.surfacemag.com/articles/north-sense-cybernetic-implant/ https://www.surfacemag.com/articles/north-sense-cybernetic-i...

aryamaan 4y ago
Where are they being sold? Could not find them at the company's website.
- tao_oat 4y ago
  IIRC they discontinued them in favor of the sentero, which just straps onto your arm with velcro (but it looks like they also aren't selling that at the moment).

isaacdl 4y ago

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. 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 :)

bentcorner 4y ago
I was thinking the same thing (as in this resembles a GPS ankle-bracelet). It sounds like the original research used a belt, which to me sounds like a more subtle device to wear: > The original idea for North Paw comes from research done at University of Osnabrück in Germany. In this study, rather than an anklet, the researchers used a belt. They wore the belt non-stop for six weeks, and reported successive stages of integration.
- smnrchrds 4y ago
  I feel like a wired belt would raise even more troublesome questions. This situation will be more likely with a belt than an anklet: https://www.dw.com/en/radiation-student-raises-fake-bomb-alert-in-brussels/a-19415441 https://www.dw.com/en/radiation-student-raises-fake-bomb-ale...
etrautmann 4y ago
I'm curious how well oriented you felt before. I currently always feel like I can point to north no matter what, so I'm wondering if I'd benefit from this or not? I suppose those abilities get worse when I'm not in a city with an aligned grid or inside a building, like hiking on a trail where you can't see the sun. Still, I'm not sure what I'd gain from this and curious if there's a next level of awareness to attain.
- foobarian 4y ago
  I'll venture a guess that you played a lot of video games with minimaps in your time :-)