To find North in the Northern Hemisphere, all you need is 10 seconds and a wristwatch.
North Paw
101–110 of 142 posts
Re: North Paw
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder how well a headband would work. Having everything integrated into a baseball cap makes the most sense.
Headband would require constant wearing of a hat. I would prefer a belt version.
Same but with a belt, I don’t wear a belt as a rule.
This could easily be a Fitbit type device on wrist.
Re: North Paw
#103It looks like an electronic shackle offenders under house arrest get
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...
Re: North Paw
#104IIRC 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…
And if you live in such a culture and have a poor sense of direction you are said to have two west feet.
Re: North Paw
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Was it the battery pack? Looking at https://www.adafruit.com/product/5579 and https://www.adafruit.com/product/1201 it should be fairly possible to get to a more reasonable size. As an alternative to the leg, having the vibration as something in the collar might be an alternative. One of the "hmm... things to make" is a lidar detector for things behind a car that then is mapped to an array of the vibration motors tha…
I drive a Chevy Suburban (6 kids), its a huge car and can be hard to see my surroundings. When I'm backing out of a parking spot, it will vibrate the left or right side of my seat if a car is coming from the appropriate direction. It'll also do the same if it senses you're drifting into another lane or if you are changing lanes purposefully (blinker on) and someone is in my blindspot. It is extremely convenient
My math teacher would say that the wise Indian parks his horses the direction of escape. Why not back into the parking spot and pull out forward? The overreliance on tech is frightening.
Re: North Paw
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
does the intuitive sense go wrong when you go to a different part of the world? how does that work out?
Not OP, but I've traveled a lot, and it takes me a few days to adapt to the new surroundings. I can't consciously point to what it is that my brain is locking on to, but I can feel 'it' click on, and then I can trust my sense of direction, like I normally do. Before 'it', I can get turned around much more easily than normal.
is this something you’ve picked up from this kind of device, or just something you’ve learned naturally?
Re: North Paw
#107I 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…
Was it the battery pack? Looking at https://www.adafruit.com/product/5579 and https://www.adafruit.com/product/1201 it should be fairly possible to get to a more reasonable size. As an alternative to the leg, having the vibration as something in the collar might be an alternative. One of the "hmm... things to make" is a lidar detector for things behind a car that then is mapped to an array of the vibration motors tha…
I always wished the throttle to be linked to slip sensor on wheels, say push back throttle a bit more when the wheels start slipping and not just wonders why WOT doesn't accelerate as fast as usual all while ECU is pulling power because of slip
Re: North Paw
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Because of the plasticity of the brain, it has been shown that most wearers gain a new sense of absolute direction, giving them a superhuman ability to navigate their surroundings. So you would say that this quote isn't exaggeration?
I wouldn't call it superhuman, but it definitely improves it a lot. I think it's helped in general with my sense of direction, but it's a lot less noticeable in an unfamiliar place (if I'm not wearing it). If I start in a familiar place, then go into somewhere unfamiliar, like a new building, my ability to keep track of cardinal directions is significantly better, which helps keep me oriented to e.g. find my way out…
I was not good at sensing direction until I learned to fly. After I had been flying a year or two, my intuitive sense of direction on the ground became fairly keen, even when I moved to another state or even to Europe.
There are certain places that trip up my sense of direction, especially Spokane, WA. In that city, south feels west to me, and strongly so. Weird.
Re: North Paw
#109Back 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=fee... [2] https://feelspace.de/en/
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?
Re: North Paw
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not OP, but I've traveled a lot, and it takes me a few days to adapt to the new surroundings. I can't consciously point to what it is that my brain is locking on to, but I can feel 'it' click on, and then I can trust my sense of direction, like I normally do. Before 'it', I can get turned around much more easily than normal.
is this something you’ve picked up from this kind of device, or just something you’ve learned naturally?
As best I can tell, it's just something that runs in the family. My mother (and her siblings) all felt the same way as well, as do many of my matrilineal cousins.