DIY EStim device
Posted: 09 Dec 2017, 14:09
I always thought I understood how electricity works. I know the terminology and played enough with electricity and Estim to figure things out.
Or so I thought. Recently, doing some more investigation into electricity and electronic mechanics made me realize a few things.
Before I start, I will once again tell the following: DIY Estim is a big no! Don't do it. I made this topic not to show you how, but to explain why you really should not.
Unlike saying: you simply shouldn't, I'm going more in depth as I understand how it all works now.
What is electricity?
The biggest question is of course, what is electricity?
Electricity is the movement of electrons from one place to another. Electrons are atoms, and they tend to move to a place where fewer electrons are in order to balance things out. It is more refined than this, but for this post, you do not need to know more, or research it if you want to know more. Some materials do not allow electrons to move through. These are called insulators.
This basically means, anything that conducts electricity will allow electrons to move through. Some materials allow better conductivity than others, and electrons want to move to a place where the resistance to move there is the least, similar as to how water will naturally tend to flow towards one direction rather than to spread all over the place. Electricity will leak into other directions too, but the majority will go into the path of the least resistance.
Electricity is expressed as Watts. When a device requires any electricity it basically requires x amounts of watts to function properly.
There is a foruma to calculate watts: Watts = current * voltage
Why is this important? Because this explains why DIY EStim devices is a really bad idea.
You can get the voltage easily. You have a power source that is rated by its voltage. For example a typical battery is 1.5 volts, a 9v battery is 9 volts, and a wall socket is ~110 volts in the USA, and 220 volts in europe and Asia.
Contrary to what people believe, voltage is not what kills you, its the current. Voltage tells us how fast electricity is flowing and current is the amount of electricity that flows at a particular place.
For example, if you have a thin wire, that wire supports a certain maximum current (little). You can put as much voltage through it as you want, but it is not going to produce a lethal shock.
Current can be seen as having a large pipe. At a place where current is limited to a small number, the pipe is narrowed. Put a lot of watts of electricity at one end, at the other, only a few watts of electricity remains. Of course, with so much voltage being bombarded at that narrow place, that section will obviously have excessive electricity that needs to be released somehow. This is dissipated through heat. That small section basically gets very hot.
This tells us that you can't actually put as much voltage through as you want, because that will cause the wire to become hot until at some point the wire breaks.
There are different materials though, and some are more heat resistant. So if the cabling can take the lower current with high voltage, then that means the high voltage will get stuck somewhere else, which can mean that the internal circuitry breaks, or if there simply is not such, the wiring still becomes hot, upto the point where its insulator (usually plastic) starts to melt.
In order to combat this, there are resistors that basically alter the flow of electricity (voltage and current) so that a safe amount can travel through a wire.
You can obviously understand that when you get to this point, you have to do a lot of experimentation in what kind of resistor you need to provide stimulating electricity for your body, but not so much that you damage your body. This is so much trial and error with so much danger, that not only do you spend a lot of money to get it right, you also risk internal injury that is most likely going to be permanent.
So to be on the safe side, you will start with building a device that only goes to a very low setting. You feel it a bit, but not much. Then you can change your device to go higher and you slowly ramp it up. When you get to a level that is definitely being felt, yet still being very much on the safe side, at this point you are about a year and probably 500$ of material further. Of course you do need an actual EStim unit to find out what the safe levels are, and your goal here is to not have to buy an EStim unit in the first place.
But lets assume you actually have a spend those 2000$ on getting the device perfect, and you now have a continuous flow of electricity that stimulates your nerves properly and safely enough, now you need to develop the more interesting part, make patterns and program interesting patterns in it.
This requires that you actually start to shape the electricity rather than control when you feel it and when you aren't. A simple Arduino won't do that. So you need another 4000$ to research that, let alone another few years of time.
And guess what, it is so much cheaper to buy a proper EStim device where all the research have been done before.
True, once you finally know how it works, and what works, it is cheap to make that EStim device. But you're not there. Not by a long shot.
Or so I thought. Recently, doing some more investigation into electricity and electronic mechanics made me realize a few things.
Before I start, I will once again tell the following: DIY Estim is a big no! Don't do it. I made this topic not to show you how, but to explain why you really should not.
Unlike saying: you simply shouldn't, I'm going more in depth as I understand how it all works now.
What is electricity?
The biggest question is of course, what is electricity?
Electricity is the movement of electrons from one place to another. Electrons are atoms, and they tend to move to a place where fewer electrons are in order to balance things out. It is more refined than this, but for this post, you do not need to know more, or research it if you want to know more. Some materials do not allow electrons to move through. These are called insulators.
This basically means, anything that conducts electricity will allow electrons to move through. Some materials allow better conductivity than others, and electrons want to move to a place where the resistance to move there is the least, similar as to how water will naturally tend to flow towards one direction rather than to spread all over the place. Electricity will leak into other directions too, but the majority will go into the path of the least resistance.
Electricity is expressed as Watts. When a device requires any electricity it basically requires x amounts of watts to function properly.
There is a foruma to calculate watts: Watts = current * voltage
Why is this important? Because this explains why DIY EStim devices is a really bad idea.
You can get the voltage easily. You have a power source that is rated by its voltage. For example a typical battery is 1.5 volts, a 9v battery is 9 volts, and a wall socket is ~110 volts in the USA, and 220 volts in europe and Asia.
Contrary to what people believe, voltage is not what kills you, its the current. Voltage tells us how fast electricity is flowing and current is the amount of electricity that flows at a particular place.
For example, if you have a thin wire, that wire supports a certain maximum current (little). You can put as much voltage through it as you want, but it is not going to produce a lethal shock.
Current can be seen as having a large pipe. At a place where current is limited to a small number, the pipe is narrowed. Put a lot of watts of electricity at one end, at the other, only a few watts of electricity remains. Of course, with so much voltage being bombarded at that narrow place, that section will obviously have excessive electricity that needs to be released somehow. This is dissipated through heat. That small section basically gets very hot.
This tells us that you can't actually put as much voltage through as you want, because that will cause the wire to become hot until at some point the wire breaks.
There are different materials though, and some are more heat resistant. So if the cabling can take the lower current with high voltage, then that means the high voltage will get stuck somewhere else, which can mean that the internal circuitry breaks, or if there simply is not such, the wiring still becomes hot, upto the point where its insulator (usually plastic) starts to melt.
In order to combat this, there are resistors that basically alter the flow of electricity (voltage and current) so that a safe amount can travel through a wire.
You can obviously understand that when you get to this point, you have to do a lot of experimentation in what kind of resistor you need to provide stimulating electricity for your body, but not so much that you damage your body. This is so much trial and error with so much danger, that not only do you spend a lot of money to get it right, you also risk internal injury that is most likely going to be permanent.
So to be on the safe side, you will start with building a device that only goes to a very low setting. You feel it a bit, but not much. Then you can change your device to go higher and you slowly ramp it up. When you get to a level that is definitely being felt, yet still being very much on the safe side, at this point you are about a year and probably 500$ of material further. Of course you do need an actual EStim unit to find out what the safe levels are, and your goal here is to not have to buy an EStim unit in the first place.
But lets assume you actually have a spend those 2000$ on getting the device perfect, and you now have a continuous flow of electricity that stimulates your nerves properly and safely enough, now you need to develop the more interesting part, make patterns and program interesting patterns in it.
This requires that you actually start to shape the electricity rather than control when you feel it and when you aren't. A simple Arduino won't do that. So you need another 4000$ to research that, let alone another few years of time.
And guess what, it is so much cheaper to buy a proper EStim device where all the research have been done before.
True, once you finally know how it works, and what works, it is cheap to make that EStim device. But you're not there. Not by a long shot.