We recently stumbled across a project from Ford’s excellent OpenXC program by Ford engineer Zac Nelson. Zac has created a custom knob for gear sticks that implements haptic feedback to communicate the best time to change gear to the driver. OpenXC allows for the development of custom software and hardware
Our sportier and health-conscious customers may have been interested in our Tech Blog post about the release of Jawbone’s ‘Up’, and there is more news from the world of healthy living products using vibration alerting. Magellan has released a watch aimed at those who take their exercise outdoors, featuring
For safety equipment reliable performance is paramount. These products are typically used in hazardous environments where any type of failure could be dangerous for the user. In this instance, we’re specifically looking at respirator purifying systems, such as the North Compact Air 200 Series Powered Air
Researchers and Georgia Tech have been using vibration motors mounted in gloves for two major applications. The Mobile Music Touch, or MMT, contains small vibration motors for each finger and a separate unit for power, processing, and communication with a PC (it can also work with an MP3
Here’s a customer application that we found quite interesting, mainly because it’s so different from the products we normally supply. The BuzzPOD is a device developed by Gorman ProMed. It consists of a simple control unit and sensors, which monitors the wearer’s sleeping position, and a
Many of the example applications we have offered for vibration alerting have centred around handheld tools and user interfaces that would be used on an industrial or construction site. The issue here is that often the operators will be wearing some form of protective clothing. For example,
We have spoken before about potential uses for vibration motors to help benefit athletes in a number of ways. Now with the London 2012 Olympics upon us, we had a quick brainstorm to suggest a couple of ways in which athletes may have used vibration
Our latest brushless vibration motor, the 912-101, is a great new product aimed at long life mechanical aid and vibration alerting applications. When it comes to driving the motor, there are some differences between it and the 910-101 coin brushless vibration motor. So we thought we would put
Back when we were writing AB-010: Mechanical Mounting for Vibration Motors: to Flexible Material and Clothing we had fun thinking of all the applications it could be used for. Almost immediately we had several ideas for providing vibration alerting in clothes, we decided to suggest uses for security guards, armed forces,
We often like to discuss how our motors are used in real-life applications. However many of the applications we have covered have been in the vibration alerting or haptic feedback fields. Much to our annoyance, fields like mechanical aid have been neglected. It is an important field and has an interesting balance of purchase