Everybody needs somebody sometimes, even if it’s just for when your back itches. But directing your itchy interlocutor to the correct spot can be a spatial relations challenge: “Right in the middle… no, down a bit… left… no, the other left! Harder! Wait, not that hard!” Why bother with all that messy interpersonal communication and human contact when you can build an automated, precision-guided back scratcher?
[VijeMiller] has aluminum extrusion tastes on a cardboard budget, but don’t let that put you off this clever build. The idea is pretty simple: a two-axis plotter that moves a rotary-action business end to any point within a V-shaped work envelope. The Arduino in the base talks to a smartphone app that lets you point to exactly the spot in need of attention on what for most of us would be an incredibly optimistic photorealistic map of the dorsal aspect of the body (mildly NSFW photo in the link above dips below the posterior border). Point, click, sweet relief.
The video below shows the rig in action, along with the Thespian skills we’ve come to know and love from [VijeMiller] with such classics as the fake floating 19th green, the no-idling-while-texting alert, and the more recent ker-sploosh fighting foam filled toilet. It does seem like he changed his name from [TVMiller] somewhere along the line, but he can’t throw us off the trail that easily.
Paging Howard Wolowitz to the white courtesy phone.
That show isn’t funny.
At least it serves a purpose as a convenient marker of who not to talk to. It took that baton from the “Friends” DVD collection of the 90s.
Uh, according to the SFX guy who dubs in the laugh track during even the most no-jocular times, it is.
Just unplug it.
Well, better than the mechanical, extendable, back-scratcher I currently have.
+1
I’m glad to see this is made out of cardboard. I could see this going so wrong if it was an industrial robot.
can you imagine! a kuka with a scratching tool, terrifying!, i once saw two of those pull a paint can in half like they where cracking an egg….
Being impaled or flayed is just the risk we take now with lethargic comforts. Meh, I can handle it.
Pft, and make me have to move my arms?! What year is this?! 2015?! I typically just use sheer will to convince my body it’s not itchy.
LOL, somebody’s been looking in my bucket list.
What’s wrong with a frame door, or a tree?
https://youtu.be/9ogQ0uge06o?t=120
Three important concepts to remember: “Unplanned Vector Excursion”, “Gouge”, and “Negative Pressure Wound Therapy”.
Thx Dan.
1. Technically Vije was the V in TV — partially dropped TV bcz I was tired of expounding on it.
2. 14th hole — how am I supposed to continuously (near stalker-ish-ly) convince them to let me play for free there if you mislabel it?! :)
3. What, you don’t like crack?
4. “thespian skills” — I currently live with a typical NYC actress friend who I rubbed that it in — thx for that bonus too!
How about a massage !