[kati]’s Clotty might run DOOM and game-ify the menstrual tracking process with a playful Tamagotchi-like aspect, but don’t let that distract you. It is, at its heart, a personal menstrual cycle tracking device that is defined as much by what it does do as what it doesn’t.
What doesn’t it do? Well, it will never quietly upload one’s menstrual tracking data to a remote server. Nor will it harvest, mishandle, disclose, or sell that same data. Shamefully, that alone sets it far apart from the wide range of period tracking services and apps out there. Also setting it apart is its cheerful lack of discretion. As [kati] puts it, she wanted Clotty’s design to scream “HELLO I AM A PERIOD TRACKING DEVICE” and at this she absolutely succeeded.
Clotty uses an RP2040, color LCD display, and a small variety of sensors built into a palm-sized, uterus-shaped PCB complete with touchpad ovaries. Right now it’s still in its early stages, and basically at the point that everything works hardware-wise and the essentials are there for software, but it’s still in active development. Keep an eye on Clotty’s GitHub repository for updates as features get fleshed out.
Of course, as [kati] observes, the core validity of a device can be defined by whether it can run DOOM, which of course Clotty can. You can find [kati]’s fork of RP2040-DOOM here.
[kati] has a knack for designing effective hardware that gamifies functions and incorporates a playfulness to the design that’s a delight to see. Take a moment to check out her Slightly Sentient D20 which is another excellent example of the kind of work she does.
The whole things begs the question: WHY IS THERE AN ARTICLE?
Just because the gadget is not for you doesn’t mean it’s not useful. Those tracking apps are truly afwul because they are just selling such sensitive data. Also that website you linked seems to hate women.
How can website hate anyone? It doesn’t have personality or feelings. It’s just a bunch of electrons hanging around in RAM sticks of some server in Croatia.
T_T
PMS, much?
(Comment approved by wife)
Why wouldn’t hackaday have an article on a unique, DIY, FOSS, and creatively-designed hardware project designed to hack around a problem space that otherwise frequently requires the use of proprietary and privacy-invading software?
I’ll try to explain:
You’re looking at a website called hackaday.com which collects and presents nerdy pursuits known in the community as “hacks”. The presentation of these hacks is based on a written convention of summarising and explaining the hacks into a collection of words and pictures known as an “article”. If you look around this website, maybe click on some of the funny looking words, you’re sure to find other articles, but they will be about different hacks.
Hope this helps.
me man! me want explosion! me want DOOM on a 555 timer! no girlie stuff!
Your whole comment begs the question: why aren’t you busy playing Fortnite with the other kiddies?
Not everyone needs to be an Einstein, not every article needs to be a PhD project.
[L]’s comment puts it pretty plain and simple. Why wouldn’t this be an article?
I half expected a Halloween hack, having it powered by a battery made from blood.
Still, it’s an amusing project. Personally it feels like a gadget looking for a problem to fix, but I guess some people prefer electronic calendars for things and Doom seems like a good way to relieve a little anger.
It’s definitely a good idea to have one of these without the Orwellian nightmare creeping in. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to share those sorts of details with big tech companies and no doubt hundreds of advertisers or not more. It just seems like common sense for this to exist and it’s sad that it didn’t already. No doubt with a case and a good battery life, perhaps a discrete option for the less fun people out there, maybe the option of other games, an extra blood version of Doom for certain days? It would no doubt sell well, just for the privacy.
The real problem comes when the data is shared with the government in places like the USA.
Yeah, a whole lot of people don’t realize that in some states in the US, over a six month period women went from using a convenient period tracker to potentially facing felony murder charges because their online period tracker reported to the cops that they missed three periods in a row and then started up again.
I’ll take things that have never happened for $500
You know how they are crazy with abortion over there currently? This did happen, in multiple cases in multiple states.
And even more of a problem when under the direction of a single man, all this data was accessed, copied and taken away – plain stolen, within few dozens of hours.
I’m all for making things just to make things.
But. Without bio/medical monitoring, isn’t this just a physical version of a reminder app? And what problem does it solve? Surely knowing whether or not you’re bleeding in your pants is easy enough to figure out without an external reminder. If it’s for knowing when you’re going to be on your period in the future, and your cycle is regular enough to use a periodic reminder (pun intended), you would just know what time of the month you’re probably going to get it, by the time you’re in college.
Forgive me if you’re a woman — I don’t want to mansplain — but if you’re a man, let me tell you it isn’t simple like that. Some women have extremely erratic periods, and the more sophisticated trackers track multiple symptoms and, using predictive methods like Sympto-Thermal and Creighton, can help you target the time more accurately.
But it isn’t really for predicting the menstrual part of your cycle. The more important part is the invisible one that comes anywhere from a few days to a few weeks later — ovulation, or “what are the consequences for me over the next 20 years if I choose to have unprotected sex today”. And the predictive methods are quite accurate if you do the monitoring and mathing right.
You can do it on paper, and it’s not suuuuper hard, but it’s annoying and fiddly. Requires charts and calculations even if your periods aren’t erratic, which this device is kind enough to do for you.
(nb the “by the time you’re in college” is an interesting statement — because as soon as you start rooming with your girlfriends it’s going to change again, and then I imagine it’s really handy to have a fertility tracker that does more than just count days.)
(correction: turns out this is just a basic calendar tracker. But if you read the comments above and the creator’s article, it’s a quality-of-life improver, both for anticipating the mood dip before the period and for the “not giving away the most private details of my life to who-knows-who” aspect. That’s awesome. That’s what hacks are about.)
Maybe this is offtopic but currently I’m working on a software to analize, plot and with a little of luck, forecast cycles of a bunch of data for trading purposes, but I think the process can be applied to track the “Der Er Kommunister i Lysthuset” event (yeah it is an euphemism,very old one, believe it or not there was a time when they were OK) if we can manage to keep a csv file with raw data. Tthere are some commercial applications also and some with free limited options like https://fractalcycles.com where you can upload raw data and run analisis also. So at least you will have some fun finding the dominant cycle using Hurst envelopes and Bartel tests :)
“Communists in the Gazebo” is a great name for your application.
It doesn’t have the same ring to it is ‘Kommunister i Lysthuset’ or ‘Maler i Opgangen’, but it is still a great name.
Does the amount of blood in Doom change depending on when you play it?
I thought it was just a demon shaped handheld
lmao
I suggest to adapt DOOM to become more friendly during PMS, more bloody during the terrible 5 (or so) days and show aggresive storks during ovulation in order to give a hint to the male part of the couple (if it exists).
Pros: it’s discreet.
Cons: it’s not very discreet.