About 10 years ago, Zach Lieberman invited Daito Manabe to give a casual presentation at the Design and Technology program at Parsons School of Design. Right outside of room 1005, there was an open space in between workstations, he demoed a version of this piece, it was pretty cool.
8 years later, influencers made a couple of episodes explaining the magic behind the shock. I didn’t remember how Daito Manabe did it, I was young and careless. However, the setup in the how-to video below is simple and easy to build/hack.
The Electronic Massager Gold Hand is $16 USD each on Aliexpress:
https://www.aliexpress.com/i/32882500132.html
and $22.99 USD on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/XFT-502-Electrical-Massager-Gold/dp/B000JV7KM6
8 Channel DC 5V Relay Module with Optocoupler for Arduino UNO:
https://www.amazon.com/ELEGOO-Channel-Optocoupler-Arduino-Raspberry/dp/B01HCFJC0Y
How to build one from the ground up:
https://www.digikey.com/en/maker/projects/qwop-made-real-control-a-person-poorly-with-arduino/d18783116cfd4b0cb02a5bcd6b63e259
Other fun stuff:
1. https://www.sparkfun.com/news/657 (Sparkfun’s Mr. Twitchy)
2. https://www.instructables.com/id/Transparent-TENS-unit/
3. https://hackaday.com/2015/03/02/building-a-transcutaneous-electrical-nerve-stimulation-device-in-a-weekend/
4. https://github.com/SPARC-Auburn/PocketTENSUnit
5. https://hackaday.io/project/61539-twitch