A pressure-sensing, vibrating buttplug that lets a group feel each other's pleasure, in the same room or spread across the world. Open source research by Joke Caimo: an own version and own form, reworking Rudolf Arnold's PLAY ME.

Five 3D-printed buttplugs in teal, green, orange, pink and purple, each with silicone tubing coiled around the shaft, laid in a display case next to a riso-printed zine.
Five players in their case, with the zine.

Pleasure as a shared signal

Each plug measures how hard the body around it squeezes. That pressure is sent to everyone else who is playing. All squeezes are added up into one world power, and every plug vibrates with it. You feel the group, the group feels you.

It is part of an ongoing practice of visualising orgasmic rhythms: treating pleasure as a relational signal rather than an individual event. Next to the vibration, a screen shows every player as a moving blob of light; the colour shifts with the world power.

How it works

A silicone tube is coiled around the 3D-printed shaft and runs to an air pressure sensor. When the muscles around the plug contract, the tube is pressed together and the sensor reads the change. A small ESP32-C3 board reads the sensor, sends the value over wifi and drives a vibration motor in the base.

Printed plugs in several colours on a workbench, among pliers, wires, an ESP32-C3 board and a hand-drawn wiring sketch.
Prints and parts on the workbench.
Four compact soldered circuits, each with an MPXV7002DP pressure sensor, a green LED, a diode and resistors on an ESP32-C3 board.
Four players, soldered: pressure sensor on top of the board.
Green plug with yellow silicone tubing coiled around it, connected to a breadboard prototype with sensor, transistor, motor and LED.
First prototype on a breadboard.

Wiring

Hand-drawn schematic in purple marker: ESP32-C3, pressure sensor on GPIO2, LED with 220 ohm resistor on GPIO7, and the vibration motor driven by a transistor with 1k ohm base resistor and a diode.
The schematic as drawn for the workshop.
PartConnection
BoardSeeed XIAO ESP32-C3
Pressure sensorMPXV7002DP: signal to GPIO2 (D0), plus GND and 3V3. The silicone tube goes on its port.
Vibration motor+ to 3V3, − to the collector of an NPN transistor (TO-92). Emitter to GND. Base via 1 kΩ to GPIO7 (D5).
DiodeAcross the motor, to protect the transistor.
LEDGPIO7 via 220 Ω to the LED, LED to GND. It glows with the vibration.
TubingSilicone, coiled around the shaft.

Make your own

Render of the 3D model: a tapered tip, a straight shaft and a base with a ring-shaped handle.
  1. PrintPrint the STL in a body-safe way: smooth the surface, seal it, and always use it with a condom over the plug.
  2. SolderBuild the circuit from the wiring table and fit it into the base. Coil the tubing around the shaft and connect it to the sensor.
  3. FlashUpload player_esp_remote with the Arduino IDE (libraries: WiFiManager and PubSubClient). Instructions are in the README in the zip.
  4. ConnectOn first start the plug opens a wifi network called Buttplug-XXXX. Join it with your phone, pick your wifi, choose a room name and your own name.
  5. PlayEveryone with the same room name plays together, wherever they are.

Play together, at a distance

The plugs don't need to be in the same room. Each one connects to the internet and talks to the others through a small message server. Every plug calculates the world power itself, so if one player drops out, the others keep playing.

No plug at hand? You can join from a phone: hold the screen to squeeze, and Android phones vibrate along.

Open the live visualisation

The zine

Riso-printed zine cover in red and blue: a figure bending over, with a plug, waves of energy and rings around the body, and a disco ball.
Zine spread titled Stimulation, Orgasm, Let your guts deside, showing the plug with its coiled tube, an air pressure sensor and a remote control.
Zine page with the artist text by Joke Caimo, printed in overlapping red and blue.

Credits

Design, electronics, code and zine by Joke Caimo (they/them/she/her), an artist exploring how collective energy, intimacy and physiological rhythms can become forms of communication. Joke is co-initiator of Samenschool, an artist-run community centre and print studio, and of the T_Cyberhol trans-feminist hacklab.

This is an own version and own form, a reworking of PLAY ME.

Based on: Rudolf Arnold, “PLAY ME: interactive sonification of sexual arousal in long-distance relationships”, Paladyn, Journal of Behavioral Robotics 11 (2020), 250–270. doi:10.1515/pjbr-2020-0014. Licensed CC BY 4.0. PLAY ME introduced the pneumatic probe: silicone tubing coiled around a printed shaft, read by an MPXV7002DP sensor.