I have a pretty cool workplace. I can wear “stupid people in large groups” or “duct tape in the bedroom” or even my dildo shirt without worrying about somebody complaining; there’s a beer fridge in our conference room, and you can often find a small gathering cracking a couple cold ones after hours. They tolerate my geekish tendencies, even occasionally come and talk to me when they don’t want something. I could probably dye my hair blue, if I wanted to.
But maybe bringing the vibrator to work was a bad idea. Continuing the aftermarket trance vibe project, a toy was acquired this weekend, carefully stowed in my office, then brought down to ELAB after hours so I could dissect it and find out how much current the motors drew, attack the control box’s mounting hole pattern with a pair of calipers, and throw together a little USB PIC test jig to write the firmware on while I wait for the official boards to come back. Anyway, it’s well after 6, and I’m enjoying the relative quiet and privacy of the deserted basement area, when all of the suddent there are footsteps in the lab. I look up just in time to see a face pop around the corner of the doorway. It was VH*, probably one of the most sweet & innocent women I know.
And there I am with a soldering iron in one hand and a vibrator in the other. I palmed The Big Egg as best I could, then spent probably 20 uncomfortable minutes trying to explain, “Well, there’s this game called Rez, and it comes with this vibrating peripheral that goes in your, eh, shirt pocket, but it’s discontinued, so I’m re-engineering a replacement…”, without letting on that the particular off-the-shelf vibrating attachments I had with me were designed not for pagers or game controllers, but for use in places where they couldn’t be solar-powered.
Anyway, the verdict on the eggs: Holy crap, these things are powerful…and that’s just with me holding one in my hand. Most likely explanation is that I’m actually operating them way over spec by testing on the bench supply instead of batteries (an ideal current/voltage source as opposed to a heavily limited source with about 50 ohms series resistance per cell). At 3VDC a single motor drew nearly an amp; the device, as it comes off-the-shelf, has 2 of these wired in parallel. Holy exploding USB ports batman! That’s no good. When put in series, they draw a slightly more reasonable 400mA, which is within the USB spec (500mA max. per device).
Interestingly (but, I guess, not surprisingly), the current drawn by an egg was very load-dependent: less when hanging free, and significantly more when held tightly in the hand (which would constrain its motion, putting a higher mechanical load on the weighted motor as it fought its own inertia).**
* there are people you don’t really worry about, and people you try not to offend because they might stick it to you somehow, e.g. get you canned or sued; then there are people you try to avoid being crass in front of on principle alone – she’s one of the latter.
** I never really considered that before – this could technically be used to measure the..er..snugness of wherever it was placed. Imagine your USB dildo reporting stats back to some kind of “am I tight or not?” site! heheh. Patent!
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