Hi hi! I'm new to this but I think I might have a good idea. Aesthetic Implants?

So I had an idea recently after seeing this image:

And I was thinking to myself… What if I could make that LED ring happen?

Would people get such cosmetic implants?

There is also the game Detroit: Become Human where, in universe, the Androids are required to wear a similar LED ring on their temple to help distinguish them from humans.

Here’s my current ideas:

  • The LED ring could be a simple flexible PCB that has the LEDs on them
  • The LED ring could be powered externally and electrical power could be transmitted to it through the skin by Inductive Wireless Power Transfer. This aleviates two problems: ONE, having the power source for these LEDs external aleviates any problems or risks that are associated with having a battery under the skin (in case of battery expansion, explosion, replacement etc). TWO, using IWPT aleviates any problems with trying to pass wires under the skin since there is no skin breach and no risk of infections apart from implanting the LED ring itself. Also IWPT appears to be the safest version of WPT for the surrounding tissues compared to Capacitive WPT or Microwave based WPT.

I was imagining something like this:

which is taken from this paper exploring this topic Wireless Power Transfer Techniques for Implantable Medical Devices: A Review - PubMed

To keep it simple, the LED ring only has the neccessary components to recieve the inductive power, convert it to DC for the LEDs and the LEDs themselves; so only passive components. Maybe the wires from the coil to the LED ring could be longer? I’m not sure but it could work although it would make the implanting process a bit more complicated.

Perhaps the LED ring could electrically be something like this?

The power transmitter would be external, meaning it could be changed easily and charged easily. It could also be removed when washing or something.

What do people think?

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That sounds really neat. It would be tough to align the implant coil with the power coil without covering it up, but maybe with some tricks you could pull it off. Do you have any electronics design experience?

I know some stuff but I’ve still got alot to learn with electronics. I know the basics but I don’t really know how to design circuit boards so I’ll need some help with this.

There could be a way of aligning the two coils with a very small magnet maybe? The feedback of the WPT transmitter coil is in the right place would be the LED ring itself as well.

I’ve got no experience with bio-compatible materials or implanting though so I hope to learn and ask around.

edit: changed if to of

In addition, the paper I linked (Wireless Power Transfer Techniques for Implantable Medical Devices: A Review - PubMed) named Inductive WTP (they called it Non Radiative Inductive Coupling) as being fairly tissue safe:

The paper also goes through some equations on how to design the coils as well as their efficiency

I can definitely help figure stuff out and show you how to do PCB design if that interests you.

Figuring out the scope of the project and any unanswered questions before you start can save you a lot of effort though. Check out this thread for a similar proposal by @Leeborg and you can check out some of the considerations we went over.

If you place the power transfer coil over top of the implant, it will cover it up. If you make the power transfer coil larger than the implant so it doesn’t cover it up, you still need to have a wearable in the same spot. You mine as well just have a light up wearable.

You could try and figure out how to transfer power over a greater distance of like 20cm, but you’re going to need a large coil and a large battery to have enough power available. It might be a bit bulky. Also making sure the coil shape and orientation is correct to transfer with power from the transmitter is a bit of a hurdle. A flat coil under the skin is going to face outward. You may need a cylindrical coil, but it needs to remain pointing towards the center of the transmitter or it won’t receive any power.

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I don’t know if it is what you were suggesting, but what came to mind is that you have an extension you pictured

But instead of the of the “electronic hardware / electrodes” pictured… that is where you put your aesthetic leds, and then in theory run the wire an inch or 2 so that it’s under a collar or something can covers up the wearable power pack?

I’m not sure how much “depth” a body mod artist can achieve with dermal elevators, but in theory the led portion would be the most narrow? So that’s easier than the other way at least

The “extension” could run into issues of work hardening and breaking due to flexing… not sure what you’d be looking at there

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That could work. Do like a two section implant with a bridge in between. Neck would be a tough install location for that though. Would probably need to be on the arm. You could wear like a bracelet to power it. That could be neat

I was also thinking about how viable it would be to have 60Hz energy harvesting. So your dedicated transmitter would operate at 60Hz which would give it much more range, but you could also hold the implant next to some power sources that have a lot of flux leakage like transformers and large power cords.

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With existing systems that are very similar to what you’re describing there is enough range to have the coils not overlap and the receiver coil could be small enough to be in the same section as the led.

I would personally use one or two leds with some optical ring over them to give the impression of a ring. With the skin on top everything is going to be very diffuse any way.

I’v tried some of these (I believe most Chinese ones use 85hz or close to that) a coin sized implant with a necklace emitter would totally be bright enough and the position on the side of the neck perpendicular to the edge of the emitter is not bad either

Edit: I’ll take a photo with me wearing this setup later

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Have you tried this? Having the transmitter coil horizontal and the receiver coil vertical is kind of the crux of the issue here. 0% power is transferred when they’re perpendicular.

What if we use multi layer PCB? By default most people use 2 layers PCB(top, bottom). Could it be possible to use another layer as the coil? Correct me if I’m wrong, because it can happen that the roll number is too small to harvest enough energy.

It’s been a while but I think there’s an area where it works. If you imagine the field lines of the emitter they do curve in that direction on the perimeter.

Love me a good well thought project! ^^

Kudos on coming up with some background research!
And the Idea is really neat!

I’ll leave offering technical advice to people more competent than me in that (aka @Eriequiet, @Az_F, @Satur9… ), but can offer Bodymod and Coding help if you need any!

That depends mostly on the region.
Neck has fairly thin skin and muscle, so you can’t go too deep there.

Even plain Haworths there have serious rejection risk.

I tend to believe (or hope is better suited here?) that @Az_F is up to something there.

The way clothes/necklaces sit and the position of an implant in the neck would make it very unlikely for the correlation to be exactly perpendicular.

Both sources will end up angled and there is an overlap that might allow it to work well.

It does bring another issue:
With our natural motion, the implant and the necklace will end up changing position constantly, and not all relative positions will provide a great coupling.

That said, this would be a bigger issue if we needed data transfer, but for power transfering only, shouldn’t be the end of the world.

Now, talking about power…

The existence of an extension from the implant might be good for some placements, but worse for some others.

Hence I ask…
If the goal is to wear a necklace and power LEDs through the field… wouldn’t sitting the LEDs directly above the coil be better?

My flex LED sits like that and it’s working great for years now.

The core reason I see the extension being helpfull is if we want to have a wired charging.
I.e. an external battery with a long cable running under the clothes, terminating in a transmitter coil envelopped in an adhesive pad.
This way you stick the pad on top of where the coil is, and the Ring glows a few inches away from it.

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When it comes to these chinese wireless led kits the emitter pumps so much energy that the precise orientation does matter that much honestly. Also we’re just lightning a couple LEDs. If the crappy nfc scanner of an Android phone can do it with an xLED then imagine a 20cm coil on 12V. I think this aspect can be figured out.
Having the coils perpendicular is not ideal but the receiver coil doesn’t have to be a flat disk in that orientation, it could also be a thin cylinder align with the source or something. With an implant of this size there’s room to play around.

Agreed, to me the added complexity of a two part implant is not worth it.




@Satur9 perpendicular is definitely viable ^. Plus these are tiny receivers compared to the ring in the op.
For ref: https://a.aliexpress.com/_Eyv7b2Z

I had some coin shaped ones but I think I lost them , they were bright like an average flashlight and smaller in diameter than the ring here.
The coin shaped ones: https://a.aliexpress.com/_EywTCTJ

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That’s what I was angling at. :dad_joke:

If it’s just for LEDs we should be good;
Trying to perform R/W there, whole new shebang!

Also, while we’re at it…

Have you ever experimented with bent coils?
Because even using flexible wiring, a closed ring needs to be rather large to pass through the head and doesn’t go well with accessories, etc…

If the field would not kill itself upon collapsing the coil upon itself at least once, then there’s some chance we can add a clasp to it. or even stitch to the neck of a jacket.

All I have is the assumption that trying to keep an open gap would fail gloriously, though…
(even not being a real gap)

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Afaik if you bend a flat coil (say 90° in the middle) it performs like a smaller coil angled at 45°. The two parts average out with a buch of inefficiency in the process.

That matches my assumption: both halves’ fields would interfere with each other.

Which should be worse if you then bend it over again.

But… I’ve seen some effects which kick in and change the behaviours of these things, and Electronics is my weakest link in this, so kinda hoping someone would bring in one of those “but if you put 2 double bent coils at 32 degrees from each other, the Somethingian effect makes them behave as a single coil, yadda yadda yadda…” :sweat_smile:

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Some sort of Halbach array thingy but with passive coils yeah :sweat_smile: I don’t think this project needs more than a standard flat coil though :crossed_fingers:

Exactly what I’m hoping for! XD

To make this happen, you’re correct!

I was thinking a few steps ahead, thinking of embedding the coil into a jacket. which makes so that it needs to operate both while open and while zipped up.

Same principle to hide the coil as a pretty necklace with the batteries as a pendant.

Just for the sake of argument, though, this is what I meant with “bent over itself”:

coil:

bent over itself:

Approaching the ends:

Thought process being that unlike a 90 degrees bend, this full 180 bend should create 2 parallel semi circles. which would either be great or catastrophic! :sweat_smile:
Then, by approaching the ends (clasping/zipping it shut but without touching), we should distribute the resulting field over a circular area again…

Just to make this shape we already need more than twice the final diameter, just for the material to close at the desired radius anyway. So losing power could be an acceptable loss for the comfort gains

You’re gonna need some bigger batteries than that :sweat_smile: sadly