This E-Fidget Spinner Doesn’t Need to Spin at All
If you find fidget spinners soothing, but don’t want to draw attention, then you should check out Micha’s E-Fidget device.
Before they caught on as a fad with the general population, fidget spinners had a real (if disputed) therapeutic purpose. Like other fidget toys/gadgets, their purpose was to give people a tactile sensation to focus on, which helps many anxious and neurodivergent people cope with their symptoms. But fidget spinners aren’t exactly inconspicuous and now that the fad has passed, people who use them risk drawing attention from their peers. But what if one could experience the sensation of a fidget spinner while keeping the gadget hidden in their pocket? That’s what Micha’s E-Fidget spinner allows.
As the name implies, E-Fidget is an electronic fidget spinner—except it doesn’t actually spin. Instead, it simulates the feeling of spinning through the careful application of haptic feedback. There are eight small haptic feedback motors arranged around the perimeter of the E-Fidget PCB. The code pulses them in sequence, which feels to the user like a normal fidget spinner as it rotates. Micha designed this specifically so that people could experience the calming sensation of a fidget spinner without needing to hold it out in the open for everyone to see.
A Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller handles the activation of the haptic feedback motors through MOSFET drivers. It can also activate LEDs that mimic the visual of a rotating fidget spinner, if the user chooses. Power comes from a small lithium battery mounted onto the PCB. Micha programmed the code using Adafruit’s CircuitPython. He also designed the custom circular PCB, which is both attractive and functional. Anyone who wants to build their own E-Fidget can use the free, open source files and send them off to a PCB fabrication house. They can either have the components added by that fab house, or assemble the board themselves if they have SMD (surface-mount device) soldering skills.
Micha demonstrated the E-Fidget in last week’s Adafruit Show and Tell stream. Skip to his presentation at 15:36. He uploaded some details on the e-fidget.xyz website and all of the code and design files on GitHub.
