[benvan]

This was a particular passion project of mine a while back. I tried building a haptic compass that could be worn on the wrist and discovered that that the actual haptics mattered a lot. Vibration didn't work at all for me (I couldn't internalise the feeling - however much the intensity modulated it just felt like buzzing) but ended up using a kind of trick of directional "tick" lines to represent proximity to North - which felt almost instantly familiar.

I never finished the project, but love this idea!

https://youtu.be/7UaAwTuahWo?si=YFBq1trurHq0P7i-

[slazaro]

That's so cool! I can imagine it kind of feels like when you have a wheel that you can turn with your fingers and it kind of "snaps" into place at regular intervals, like your body rotation is snapping into a cardinal direction.

Have you thought about trying something similar using Android? Taking the compass and doing small short vibration blips, you can also pair them with sound and light for testing or reinforcing it. Although I can imagine that the compass is not very accurate and the vibration control on Android is probably all over the place in terms of consistency between devices. But being able to have it as something compact that you probably already carry around could make it real-life useful.

I can imagine it being an assistance when it's in your pocket and it passively keeps feeding you the blips, you could use the proximity detection to make it only do that when in your pocket, for instance.