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Posted by in News.

Crappy news.

We have to cancel the rest of the Mod Project.

First, let us all say that we are terribly sorry to the backers to whom we were unable to deliver, and the long delays experienced overall throughout this entire project. All of your support (and for endeavors like this we could not have asked for a more understanding helpful community) has been incredible, and no matter what, it’s led to many positive things. For instance this project helped us contribute many hardware, software, web, and mold-making innovations to the open-source community (Github here: https://github.com/Comingle/ , tutorials at http://www.comingle.io). Our experiences with this project involving open-source sex-tech also helped shine a light on some important issues standing in the way of sex-tech freedom.

Patents attacking Sex Tech

At the forefront, we got to lead a historic stand against some terrible patent trolls.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/teledildonics-patent-used-to-sue-six-nascent-cybersex-companies/

http://www.vice.com/read/a-patent-troll-is-trying-to-stop-dildo-innovations-803

http://gizmodo.com/sorry-you-cant-have-any-more-sex-toys-because-of-this-p-1719816692

This terrible case, (that’s still going), feels like it will never disappear, and this sort of bullshit can take not only massive financial tolls, but extremely mental tolls as well. It’s difficult to keep working non-stop, every day, when there is a huge thing like an international lawsuit looming over you. Despite the droves of pre-existing evidence that invalidate this ridiculous patent, small companies like us would be bankrupted immediately by the flat court fees needed to simply defend oneself in such a case (~$30-$40,000, not including standard patent lawyer fees averaging over $1 million if we had not been able to secure an amazing pro-bono lawyer).

This is the leverage patent trolls use to try to extort money from people working to share and explore the new abilities technology can afford us. We were able to use our position as the small guy though to lead the first group to really stand up against this troll that has been rampaging through the sex-tech community for the past 2 decades. We managed to secure a pro-bono representation against these people and their thug-like tactics, and come to the aid of the other defendants of small-business sex-tech innovators like Vibease. This helps send a powerful message to the patent trolls (which are particularly rampant in the world of sex-tech), that the new pioneers of this field will not simply bow down to the billionaires locking up ideas. We have already cost the not-nice people at TZU more money in their own legal fees than they could have ever gotten from our tiny company.

I shouldn’t go into a full rant right now, but please, if you take away anything from this, the next time someone tries to tell you that “patents exist to spur innovation” this is a complete lie, and the total opposite of the truth. The true innovators that exist today are the ones out there exploring and pushing the limits of how we as humans can help each other and discover new experiences. They are not the people who try to lock up knowledge in order to make a quick buck.

Basic Problems in Sex Tech

It would be one thing if the trolls were the only problem in the world of innovative Sex-Tech, but unfortunately the field is hampered in several areas by backwards policies and cultural stigmas. Some just brief examples that we have had to deal with:

Some payment processors, web services (e.g. Mailchimp), funding sources (e.g. Kickstarter, Bolt), and manufacturing facilities have told us that they simply cannot work with us because we fall under the category of “Sex, Drugs, and Rock-and-Roll” (this is a direct quote from a potential investor, and kinda odd, because I’m sure they would fund rock-and-roll projects). We have been invited to and kicked out of art exhibitions and 2 Start-Up incubators.

Despite the American society’s general enthusiasm about “Entrepreneurship” and start-ups, once you enter the sex-tech game you start to learn how many opportunities are cut off for you. We have thoroughly probed the hidden walls surrounding Sex-tech, but hopefully our experience illuminates these barriers and lets us all start working at overcoming them.

Small Consolation

In order to provide a small bit of consolation to our backers to whom we were unable to provide, we have met with some other companies who have agreed to give you all special offers.

Please remember that none of us are huge companies. We are the smallest (a couple of folks that turned our basement into an artisanal dildo factory), but even these other companies are no JimmyJane or Lelo. We are all just a handful of nice companies working to try to open up the world of sexual technology which has traditionally been quite locked up by a handful of massive corporations. Thus we are extremely grateful for Vibease and Mysteryvibe who stepped up out of their own kindness to give our backers special offers.

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If you are one of the backers who was unable to receive their toy, email us at [email protected] and we will give you the codes described below.

From Vibease: (https://www.vibease.com/esthesia)

We would like to offer you a special code for Esthesia Smart Rabbit for $49.90 (Shipping within the States is $9.90, while international will be depending on the countries). The product ships in the middle of March. 

From Mysteryvibe: (https://mysteryvibe.com/)

We would like to offer the backers a special code for 40% off our toys (which will cover our costs and shipping). The code will be activated on March 1.

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Conclusion

We really understand that this sucks a lot. We all lost lots of time and money to this project. We are exhausted. We have spent 3 years of unpaid labor and tens of thousands of dollars of our own money working on this project, and we hit the point where it’s impossible for us to continue.

I hope that in some small way though, we have helped make the DIY community a bit less afraid of sex technology, and that the Sex-positive community is a bit more inspired to start tinkering and building their own new devices. (Also at least we got to help with sending dildos to those jerks in Oregon! Thanks, Sarah!)

 

Remember: sex is weird, but it’s nothing to be feared. Please treat each other nice, have great experiences with each other, and share the things you make so that we can all join in the fun.

Thanks for contributing to an extraordinary experience.

Sincerely,

Andy and the team at Comingle

OSSW-Logo

Posted by in Blog, News.

Along with the physical design of the Mod, we needed to put tons of effort into the User experience and the Software Design. Thus with a crack team of coding pioneers, we created the “Modify” App. It’s a browser plugin that lets you entirely re-program your toy directly from Chrome WITHOUT HAVING TO DO ANY CODING!

Check out all the resources to reconfigure your toy at the Modify Page.

 

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Posted by in How-To.

Many of you are now getting your dilduinos in the mail! To help you all get started we wanted to share a really cool interface, that’s REALLY easy to build! We are going to make a robust proximity sensor to control your motors, and one of the best parts is that barely any extra hardware is required. You can make this whole sensor with nothing more than just a a gator clip or a piece of copper tape!

This tech lets you connect your dilduino to almost anything around you and turn it into an interface to control your dildo! Examples include:

  • Your own partner’s skin!
  • Fruit (bananas? Melons?)
  • Metal objects (floggers? Jewelry?)
  • Splashes of Liquid (I’ll let your imagination run wild here)

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Posted by in News, Newsletters.

(Not displaying properly? Read this on the web here.)

Comingle

Hi friends! We’ve reached the 2 month mark since our campaign finished, so we wanted to let y’all know what we’ve been up to.

Numbers:

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Ladyfest Zildo Workshop Documentation

Posted by in How-To.

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So you want to host your own DIY Sex Toy Workshop, but you don’t really know where to even begin? No worries, we gotcha covered! 😉 In this article you will find all the tips and tricks for hosting a successful workshop based on our our Zildo project. We learned a great deal from running this at Ladyfest Atlanta this year and want to share our experiences to help you run a successful DIY Sex Toy Workshop of your own!

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Conjoin Brain & Shaft

Posted by in How-To.

Introduction

Zildos came from an effort to figure out the quickest, easiest way to make and customize a personal vibrator. These can be seen as the other end of the DIY spectrum from Comingle’s Mod which is incredibly powerful, but has a much more sophisticated build process. The Zildo is like a self-published guerilla Zine of sex toys- You have full control of making this fun thing however you want. It is meant to be cheap and easy to make like the LED-throwie of personal massagers.

With a Zildo, you can be ready for a relaxing time in just about 10 minutes using only some thermoplastic, a vibration motor, and a coin cell battery.

These make for good, homebrew bulletvibes and can add vibration to non-vibrating dildos!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
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Posted by in Blog, News.

Thank you thank you thank you thank you! To everyone who contributed, tweeted, wrote about us, lit a candle for us, and even those who wished us no particular ill will. Thank you! Our Indiegogo campaign was successful, so it’s time to start slingin’ some ‘dos!

We sold 151 Mods, 12 Dilduinos, a whole bunch of sensor packs, printed T shirts, snow crash kits, and homeless dildos to people in 18 different countries. The United States led the way by contributions, followed by Germany, Netherlands, Canada, UK, and Switzerland. We also secured some outside funding to help us along our way!

We’re super excited not only to start getting the Mod produced, but also see what kind of crazy sexy cool things you come up with! We’ll continue to post updates as we have them, and if you contributed you’ll be hearing from us soon as well so we can touch base.

Thanks!

Craig, Melanie, Paul, and Andy @ Comingle

MuseSmiley

Posted by in How-To.

Introduction

In this example we show you how to control your Mod dildo with you or your partner’s mind**! The Muse Brain Sensing Headband allows for some seriously sexy experimentation, -and the setup is super easy! By following just three simple steps in this how-to article, your dildo can respond to: blinking, jaw clenching, and excitement levels! This intriguing development not only opens the door to new funky play between sexual partners, but also possesses the potential in being a supplementary aid to those with non-standard bodies.

This example gives a full working path from Muse’s Headband, to the Muse SDK, to Processing (via OSC), to Arduino. It’s a great example for people making projects that want to have any of those connections!
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