Jock Shock is a live connection to the KHOW studio. With hardware and software from LabJack, you can vote to shock Tom Martino or his producer Mike while they're on the air. Do they say something that shocks you? Shock them right back. Your fellow listeners are in on the game, too, so you'll have to work together. Click the buttons labeled "Tom" or "Mike" to vote to shock them. If one of them gets enough votes, this site will shock them. If you exhaust all your votes, you'll have to wait a moment while they replenish (and Tom or Mike recover). The Jock Shock site will balance your tenacity with Tom and Mike's tolerance for pain, limiting how often they get shocked (to avoid a Simpsons incident).
* All kidding aside, we don't recommend that anyone wear a shock collar or use a shock collar in any way not recommended by the manufacturer. Anyone who wears a shock collar does so at their own risk.
Background
The Tom Martino show is a staple in the LabJack office. When we heard Tom shocking Mike on the 12/03/08 show, we knew we could help automate the process and have some fun, too. A LabJack is an inexpensive and easy interface between computers and the physical world, and it doesn't get more physical than wearing an Innotek UltraSmart Micro Remote Trainer *.Technology
The LabJack connects the shock collar to the web, and our CloudDot software connects this site to the collar. Hover your mouse over the system to learn more:
Click one of the shock buttons in your browser to send a vote to Jock Shock.
The webserver at JockShock.com keeps score and sends "shock" messages to CloudDot when it receives enough votes.
The CloudDot service controls the UE9. It requests sensor readings every 10 seconds, and when it receives messages from sites like Jock Shock it commands the UE9 to activate the shock collars' remote.
The LabJack UE9 is a multifunction data acquisition and control device. It collects analog temperature and light readings from its attached sensors and relays them to CloudDot. Its digital I/O interfaces with the shock collars' remote, effectively turning the UE9 into the remote.
The wirless remote control sets each shock collar's intensity and delivers the shock. We soldered wires to the remote's buttons and connected them to the UE9.
Tom and Mike, being good sports, wear the shock collars on the air and anxiously anticipate your votes.
Hardware
The LabJack UE9 has 23 digital inputs and outputs, and we use 10 of them to connect to the remote's buttons and display. The digital connections can shock either collar and read the shock intensity. The UE9 has an Ethernet interface that connects it to our CloudDot server. By maintaining a persistent connection to CloudDot, the LabJack in the KHOW studio can be controlled from anywhere. In addition to its digital I/O, the LabJack collects analog temperature and brightness sensor readings and relays them to CloudDot.See pictures of the hardware on our flickr site.