This is a virtual reality aroma enhancement unit that was released to promote a game called The Fractured But Whole. In the game the characters use the power of flatulence in combat and this unit responds accordingly by forcefully emitting the aroma of a fart directly in your face.
I’m guessing that this was purely intended for fun promotional purposes, because I’m not sure anyone could actually handle having a fart fired up their nose every time they used that power in the game.
The unit is robust and stylish, but also carries the hallmark of being a prototype, with a lot of manual assembly associated with a short production run. Further investigation reveals that it was designed by the Hackerloop technical collective (they did a great job) and there are hints that the circuitry may be based on a custom form-fitted Arduino system. The processor is an Atmel ATSAMD21E18A-F. I get the feeling that the designers may have regretted their choice of connector. When the glue was removed the wires were prone to popping out of them.
The aroma cartridges may have been based on a custom aroma absorbed into polymer pearls, but none were present when I opened it, although the aroma was definitely there. (you may have noticed) Having sniffed the cartridge that had low residual aroma first, I was a bit overconfident in sniffing the other one that seemed to have around 100 farts left in it that occurred simultaneously when I sniffed it.
I’d like to thank the Ashens channel for this worthy contribution for our technical enlightenment. You can find the Ashens channel here:-
By the time I’d finished this teardown, my fingers, tools and absolutely everything in the vicinity smelled of fart. And they still do.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:-
