The professional chess world is in chaos after accusations that master Hans Niemann has been cheating in official play, including some wild theories about how he might be getting outside help. But are vibrating anal beads that wirelessly communicate with the outside world even possible? It turns out the technology can work, and Adafruit will teach you how to build your own.
Based in New York, Adafruit Industries designs, builds, and sells open-source electronics hardware, and if you’re handy with a soldering iron and building your own gadgets, there’s a good chance you’ve bought some parts from Adafruit’s online store. The company is also very much about sharing knowledge, and provides plenty of tutorials through its website, including this most recent step-by-step build, which might add some credence to those wild chess cheating theories.
The DIY project starts with a plastic soda bottle preform (these are heated and expanded through a moulding process to create the larger soda bottles you’ll find on store shelves), which is waterproof and nearly indestructible: an important feature depending on where you plan to use your Cheekmate (yes, that’s really what it’s called) device. From there, it’s stuffed with a small assortment of various electronics, including a haptic buzzer, a battery, an ESP32-S2 board with built-in wifi, and some wires and soldering.
The tutorial also includes all the code needed for the device to receive wireless text messages through the Adafruit IO cloud service and then translate them into Morse Code, which is transmitted to the user by pulses of its haptic buzzer. To successfully learn to cheat at chess, if that’s how you intend to use your Cheekmate, you’ll need to learn Morse Code first, but that’s probably a lot easier than the actual game.
Unable to find a willing volunteer, the Cheekmate was tested using a slab of bone-in port butt roast, into which the device was securely lodged.
Although some have wondered if wifi signals could successfully reach a device like vibrating anal beads given where they’re located, the Cheekmate proves they indeed can. The only challenges that still remain are adjusting the intensity of the encoded vibrating messages, because as demonstrated here, they are far from subtle. There’s also the question of successfully sneaking a device like this past security and metal detectors, which are sure to become a common feature in chess tournaments around the world moving forward.
Leave a Reply