Wouldn’t it be great if, while playing a virtual reality game, you could feel the heat of a fire on your arm? Or the cold of chilly water? Engineers around the world have been trying to make that happen, but there is a big problem: temperature changes are slow. The immersive effect diminishes when the thermal feedback lags behind the virtual cause. That’s why a team from South Korea’s Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology turned to motors to dramatically speed up the process.

The Flip-Pelt wearable device relies on Peltier elements to create heating and cooling effects, which is a common strategy for thermal feedback. Peltier elements use electricity to produce thermal transfer, heating one side of the element while simultaneously cooling the other side. By placing a Peltier element against the skin, it is possible to create a cooling or heating sensation on demand.

But it takes a long time to reverse the thermal transfer — changing a side of the Peltier element from hot to cold is too slow to be useful for VR thermal feedback. So, the Flip-Pelt prototype doesn’t even bother. Instead, it keeps the Peltier elements going in just one direction and physically swaps the side of the elements that touch the user’s skin.

The prototype Flip-Pelt device contains eight Peltier elements arranged in two rows along the inside of the user’s forearm. Eight servo motors, controlled by an Arduino Nano 33 IoT board, can flip the elements from the cool side to the hot side in response to events in the VR world. The Arduino also controls the Peltier elements themselves through H-bridges, so it can adjust the power going to each.

While this is relatively complex, it does create almost instant changes in perceived temperature.

You can read more about the project in the team’s published paper here.

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As climate change continues to worsen, events such as heavy rains, hurricanes, and atmospheric rivers have only intensified, and with them, large amounts of flooding that pose serious risks to life and property. Jude Pullen and Pete Milne, therefore, have responded by creating a “physical app” that can show the potential for flood dangers in real-time with sound, lights, and an ePaper display.

The Arduino Nano 33 IoT powering the Flood Alert device sources its data from the UK Environmental Agency’s API to get statistics on an area’s latest risk level along with an extended description of what to expect. Initially, the electronics were mounted to a breadboard and housed within a cardboard enclosure, but a later revision moved everything to soldered protoboard, a 3D-printed case, and even added a piezoelectric buzzer to generate audible alerts.

For now, the Flood Alert’s sole source of data is the aforementioned API, but Pullen hopes to expand his potential data sources to include “hyper-local” sensors that can all be aggregated and analyzed to give a much more precise view of flooding in a smaller area.

To learn more about Flood Alert and its myriad applications to local communities and beyond, check out the original long read article’ is available at DesignSpark.

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