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A Shocking Controller For The Xbox
An anonymous reader writes "This is freakin' awesome - Kevin Rose from TechTV has built a 20,000-volt shocking Xbox controller. Imagine playing your friends in Mortal Kombat now... you can actually feel the pain. Seems easy to build and runs about $40 in parts."
Will spend an extra $10 and build a testes adapter.
This thing has Darwin Award written all over it
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-Xenocrates
I wonder what uses women would have with this one since it doesn't virbate..
Anyone else read the page and think "so where are the pictures of it being tested on someone???"
Imagine playing your friends in Mortal Kombat now... you can actually feel the pain.
This is nothing new. Playing any recent Mortal Kombat title always pains me greatly.
...work as one of those infomercial electro-workout machines? Just imagine it, you can exercise while sitting on your fat ass, eating cheetos and playing XBox.
Thank you, Bill Gates. Total fitness solution.
Never argue with an idiot, he'll just lower you to his level and beat you with experience.
> Kevin Rose from TechTV has built a 20,000-volt shocking Xbox controller. Imagine playing your friends in Mortal Kombat now... you can actually feel the pain.
Whatever happened to the good old days, when you and your friends just threw dirt clods at each other?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Wouldn't this give whoever's playing Rayden a dramatic advantage?
Tweet, tweet.
Painstation.
At least X-Box gamers will no longer be able to reproduce (not that they stood any significant chance before).
Yeah, like the Xbox controller wasn't painful enough already.
God is dead -- Nietsche
Nietsche is dead! - God
"Seems easy to build and runs about $40 in parts."
And another $10,000 in hospital bills.
The Political Programmer
"what are you, an idiot?" stories.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Bill Gates got you all beat w/ the x-box
http://www.bbspot.com/News/2001/06/xbox.html
This kid really, really needs to get laid.
Now if only I could rig this up on everyone's keyboard to shock anyone that wants to remove a hand and continue chatting...
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Funniest part of the whole damn article:
"Make sure to keep the shocker in one hand! You never want to split the ground/voltage between two hands. If you do, the voltage runs through your heart, which is bad."
We need more disclaimers like this one...
Reading your post made me think of creating a new game:
TASER TAG!
"Last one standing, wins!"
from the article
Run two wires (ground/voltage) from the pest shocker into the Xbox controller. I ran mine through one of the front memory sockets. Drill two holes through the controller to the desired location of the shocker.
Make sure to keep the shocker in one hand! You never want to split the ground/voltage between two hands. If you do, the voltage runs through your heart, which is bad.
I nominate SCO's logo.
But then again, I could be wrong.
Does anyone else think that using such a sadistic device is the mark of an idiot? Making such a device for your own use is even more stupid.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
why anybody would want to do this I dunno..
I read every post and saw several pondering the why question, and like you every one did not mention the obvious answer:
The purpose (and fun part) is not to shock yourself, but to shock the person with whom you are competing. It's like gambling with pain -- it's a blast to see your friend get zapped, and it's a great motivator to do well if you'll be shocked when you don't, and that's suspense and fear and thrill and excitement, and that's what gaming is all about.
Remember how much scarier Doom was than Wolfenstein? The tech made the better graphics which made a better (more real) experience. People who don't like to be scared might ask "why would you play a scary game? being scared is uncomfortable!" (actual quote from such a person who I know).
It's extreme yes, but I think it would very fun (excepting the video game chosen, perhaps, but that's easily changed) assuming 2 controllers are available. It would also be cool to have a bigger range of shock-levels (with both controllers linked to the same control, of course), so players could agree beforehand on shock level (wager) for thier duel (gamble).
This could also force a more realistic blocking delay. If you arranged the electrodes so that not touching them would make you unable to control your character, you could defend (i.e., not get shocked) by letting go of the stick. You avoid a shock, but you can't move your man, and there's some delay before you can move competently again because you have to re-grip the stick. Very cool.
I think this is a great idea that could be fairly well-accepted if the available shock voltage range is wide enough. 20kV, even at only 0.002J, seems like a lot for minimum settings.
everything in moderation
This is just a preemptive response to all the misinformed posts about how many "volts" it takes to kill you.
:)
It's the AMPS that hurt, not the volts. But it takes VOLTS to overcome your body's resistance. If the current passes across vital organs, it's a different story.
E=I*R
Or DEATH = VOLTS / RESISTANCE
It takes about 100mA, or 0.1A, through the chest cavity to kill you. A couple of amps from one finger to the other will cause extreme damage and pain, but probably will not kill you.
You can stick your tongue on a 5V, 100A power supply and nothing will happen. You can also put you hand on a tesla coil producing a few KV, and you hair will stand on end but that's it.
But touch with each hand to a source capable of delivering 1+ KV at 10mA or more, and prepare to be zapped out of your gourd or maybe killed. A common stun gun generates a few KV but it is DESIGNED not deliver enough current (electron movement as opposed to "pressure") to kill. Same goes for this xbox mod - I'd have a go at it.
about a month ago my roomate came home with 250 9 volt batteries he had gotten free from work becase they only had 8 volts or so in them.. so, of course we strung them end to end and were making little streeks of lightning. it made little balls of plasma on a glass of water, if you put on cable in the water, and the other just above it. fun stuff. Long story short i got a little too close to both contacts, got blown acros the room, as i had an aluminum splinter in my hand, it jumped into my hand, burning me badly there, and then out my wrist on the opposite hand. flew across the room swearing at teh top of my lungs, and then stomped the sht out of the abomination that was 2k volts of batteries. SO I ask you, how many amps would i have been hit by there? I know it was 2k volts, Because we had a volt tester present, but i have no idea the amperage. anyone?
-and occasionaly a giant moose.
...and its perfect for an episode of jackass.
The most common "low voltage" electrical injuries are some kind of cardiac arrhythmia. The 60-cycle current that is the standard in the United States is just right to cause your heart to fibrillate at fairly low amperages. Presumably this is where the old "don't let the current go across your heart" expression comes from.
Once your heart is fibrillating, you rapidly lose consciousness, and are in cardiac arrest... just like the 70yo cardiac patient who collapses in your local Wal-Mart. You have about ten minutes to get defibrillated, or receive some kind of CPR before your odds of any kind of recovery are slim-to-none. The sooner you get defibrillated, the better (odds of survival go down roughly 10% per minute of unresuscitated cardiac arrest). What you require is direct-current defibrillation via your nearest AED, or friendly neighborhood EMS agency.
Now let's talk about high-voltage injury, which can be a bit different. High voltage injuries often cause burns at the entrance and exit site; not unexpected. However, electricity follows the path of least resistance, so any muscle belly inbetween the contact points (full of ions and such to conduct the jolt) is potentially the current's path. Problem is, high voltage will often literally "cook" that muscle belly, causing wholesale cell death and tissue necrosis... a BIG problem if it goes unrecognized.
Once that dead muscle starts to break down, it releases its component proteins into the bloodstream... myoglobin, CPK etc, a condition called rhabdomyolysis. Those proteins circulate until they reach the kidneys, and that's where the secondary problem begins.
The kidneys use their Glomeruli to "filter" the blood, and they do it well under normal circumstances. However, when this avalanche of excess protein hits them, the nephrons clog up, causing ATN (acute tubular necrosis), and renal failure. Unfortunately for you, you are now a dialysis paiient. Your kidneys may recover eventually, so you won't necessarily be a 3x/wk dialysis patient forever... but if this ever happens, I promise you you'll never want to repeat the experience.
There is a way to mitigate this, of course, and it's as simple as recognizing the high voltage injury, and keeping the person's kidneys running at full bore. Yep. That means running massive quantities of fluids into your veins, and watching it come right out of your foley catheter... with diuretic assistance, if necessary (diuretics are drugs that make you urinate).
Massively-high-voltage injuries, like lightning strikes, are another animal entirely. These injuries are less well-understood (probably due to the difficulty in replicating the phenomenon for study).
All of these injuries are bad, and I'd highly recommend avoiding them all... otherwise, you may find yourself in the ER with a guy like me standing over you... truly a horrifying experience.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.