Lelo Lyla RF/Arduino Control Hack
One of the best things that I think can happen to someone who blogs
about a horribly over-specific subject is to have a story be so
interesting and well-written that they get so caught up in interacting
and watching explode that they completely forget to actually write
about the damn thing on their own site until 3 days later. I find
myself in that situation now, and couldn't be happier about it.
3 days ago, scanlime wrote one of the best, clearest, most
accessible reverse engineering posts I've ever read, and it just so
happened to be about sex toys. She took a Lelo Leya vibrator, which
uses a common RF chip to talk to an accelerometer enabled controller,
reversed the RF protocol, and made a new hardware control solution
using sonar rangefinders that better fit her interface needs.
Then the internet blew up.
The list goes on for quite a while.
There's... honestly not much to be said on here. I'm not gonna
summarize the article any more than I have. For fuck sake, go read it
(and watch the video above). I can only hope to put out content of
this quality in future Slashdong posts. Everything is outlined
understandably, and the project accomplished a well-set goal in a
straight-forward way.
More than that, I hope we start seeing more content like this, period.
It's sometimes been lonely running Slashdong and I love seeing more
stuff like this. Most of what the media has covered lately has been
"did you know you can fuck with a computer?" or "look what the weird
fetish people do!" shit. Not getting the media they should are the
many new businesses/projects/blogs like Doctor Xtreme and his
Orgasmatron X1 or the Toymaker Project and their
Hammer Sensor/LED Dildo. All of whom I need to get around to
covering here, but even if I don't, the fact that they exist and that
the DIY sex tech world is becoming a slightly more populated place is
pretty fucking awesome. I've watched the cycle of sex tech oscillate
for almost 8 years now, and this is the most momentum I can remember
the DIY side building. There's certainly exciting things in the
commercial realms, especially with some new startups happening, but in
the end, I'm personally more interested in small, one-off, well
executed solutions than large commercial successes.
So, here's to a hopeful upswing in the cycle that doesn't end so quick
this time. Or maybe doesn't end at all.
Now, back to the eye bleeding task of mining comment threads for what
what tidbits of decent content I can among sexist anti-fucking
shitbags. It's a tough job, but... no, no one should really have to do
it.