The Pen15 Board

Oh my god I can't believe we're actually doing this.

6 years ago, I started slashdong with a dream. A dream to one day do something absolutely silly like have a circuit board with penises drawn on it in traces.

Thanks to the wonderful people at Trinculo's Attic, that dream is now a reality.

The Pen15 Board is a relatively simple Arduino shield, built specifically for sex tech and teledildonics research. At its core is a MOSFET, 2 resistors for current regulation, and a jack to hook up vibrators to.

Actually, that's more than its core. That's the whole thing, period. Told you it was simple!

The board works off USB power, so there's no need for multiple power supplies. The current limiting resistors allow for an array of small bullet motors to be used without worrying about current draw. It's not really powerful enough to do much more than that, but this should get you started on the way to larger projects. Leads on the board will allow it to stack with other shields.

The board sells in 4 different versions at Trinculo's Attic:

  • $10 Unassembled Kit w/o Vibrator
  • $15 Assembled Kit w/o Vibrator
  • $15 Unassembled Kit w/ Vibrator
  • $20 Assembled Kit w/ Vibrator

The website for the board will be at http://pen15.slashdong.org. We'll be hosting basic control code there, as well as interesting projects people have done with the board.

I'm also going to be using this board as part of my Kinect Teledildonics class at Art && Code next week. Assuming all goes well there, I'm looking at teaching more DIY sex tech classes. If you're interested in possibly hosting a class at your hackspace/gallery/parent's basement, please get in touch via the tips email on the sidebar, or ping me on twitter at @qdot

For those of you who may be asking "But qDot, you've railed about shitty, juvenile design of sex interfaces for years! Why put penises all over your circuit board?" Well, I've come to the realization that sometimes, having the humor of an adolescent male combined with the technical knowledge of a professional engineer can make for some really awesome stupidity. So, yeah, that's pretty much it. :D

The Pen15 board isn't about money or marketing, it's about getting open source, cheap sex tech into the hands of as many people as possible. Ok, and slightly about putting more pictures of genetalia on circuit boards. BECAUSE IT'S AWESOME.

Again, this board would've stayed stuck in my head as a "someday" thing had it not been for Trinculo's Attic. We highly recommend them for all of your custom circuit board needs. Especially if you want to draw silly things on the board. They're totally up for that.