An interactive urinal is a device that allows users to play video games or control interactive displays while urinating. Several designs have been produced to date, usually comprising a urinal fitted with a pressure sensor to measure the strength and position of the urine flow and an LCD screen mounted above the urinal to provide animated graphics. [1] [2]
A British company called Captive Media developed and patented an interactive video game system for installation above urinal bowls in 2011. [3] Their system operates by use of infra-red detection of urine temperature, with the sensors integral to the screen unit which is positioned above the bowl. Amongst others, the system is installed in The Exhibit Bar in Balham in London, [4] and Ta Bouche Bar in Cambridge, UK. [5]
Players control the system by directing their stream left or right. Currently the system has two games:
Players can then access an affiliated website called Captive Games to view their scores on a leader board, and use Twitter to broadcast them. When not in use the screens display entertainment content, including YouTube videos and Internet memes, as well as the venue's own promotional material and third-party advertisements.
In 2006 the design magazine Yanko Design presented a concept for a urinal containing a pressure-sensitive display screen that is triggered when it is urinated on, producing images and sound. According to the designer, Marcel Neundorfer, it transforms urination into "more than just a necessary nuisance. By projecting the game experience into the public space, viewers are treated to a new way of visualizing the abstract, and the entertainment value is boosted." [1]
An interactive urinal named PlaceToPee, formerly named PleeStation (plee means "toilet" in Dutch), was devised in Belgium by software engineer Werner Dupont and electrical engineer Bar Geraets. The pair came up with the idea during a drinking session in a bar and attracted the interest of sanitary equipment company Guedens Sanitair Verhuur, which provided financial support to develop a single PlaceToPee unit. [6] The PlaceToPee was installed in the 2007 GamePower Expo in Ghent with a racing game that allowed visitors to steer on-screen cars with their urine. The system gave warnings to players about drunk driving if their urine was off-target. It was shut down after the Belgian police deemed it to be indecent. [7] The following year the makers displayed the PlaceToPee at the "Arendonk Zingt & Swingt" festival. It allowed users to answer on-screen questions by urinating in a particular direction. The creators publicly expressed confidence in their product and suggested that it could be used as a sophisticated means of counting votes for the Miss Belgium contest. [8] Women are catered for by providing them with a cardboard cone to direct their urine. [6]
The interactive urinal communicator is an advertising device invented by bioengineer Dr. Richard Deutsch for the Islip, New York company Wizmark. The 3.5-inch (8.9 cm) screen is placed in a urinal to promote products or services. Deutsch commented, "Now when nature calls, there is going to be something entertaining to look at and listen to." [9]
Features of the advertising include:
Deutsch commented to Marketing Magazine that "Beginning with early attempts at writing one's name in the snow, there has always been an element of recreation associated with urination for men." Such advertising vehicles are not entirely new: some plain screens have carried advertising for a few years now and poster style ads in washrooms are quite common. The use of interactive urinal screens is being advocated by guerrilla marketers. [10]
In 2009, artist Ricardo Carvalho and programmer Alias Cummings created an interactive urinal entitled Global Warming, in which the trail of urine hits on a grid of ultra sensitive piezos housed within the urinal. The strength and direction of the urine is calculated and used to control the navigation of a 3D Earth globe, leaving a trail of thousands of Google Earth place markers on its surface. The spectator's action is reminiscent of spraying, the animal behaviour of identifying and marking territory. Global Warming, besides its obvious environmental connotation, is an ironic take on how primitive territorial instincts, such as the visceral act of spraying, can be exercised through supposedly intelligent and networked devices and at the same time disguised by them. [11]
The Japanese company Sega has developed an interactive urinal system called the Toylet. [2] A choice of four mini-games can be selected:
The Toylet records players' scores and allows them to be saved onto a USB memory stick. Advertisements are shown between games. The system has been installed in the men's toilets in four stations of the Tokyo Metro, including Akihabara, Soga, and Ikebukuro. It was trialed until the end of January 2011. [2] Some units are available at the new Tokyo Sega Joypolis.
Simulated versions of Toylets are playable in the video game Yakuza Kiwami 2.
Open source hardware project. The Pinect, [12] a hand-free game console for pissoirs named after the popular hand-free controller, Kinect. The Pinect is an open source project, meaning that the hardware and software designs, as well as the 3D case design, are freely available to the public.
The Pinect's electronics are based on an Android tablet (Mediapad T3 10), Arduino, and a low-cost 0.3M USB camera. This makes it accessible to a wide range of DIY makers and developers. The use of the Android platform allows for easy game development using popular game engines such as Libgdx, Unity, and Godot etc.
Currently, there is one game available for the Pinect console. PiBall [13] is a network football arcade game for two players, which was developed for the FIFA World Cup 2018 in Russia.
This open source implementation of an interactive urinal not only provides a unique and entertaining experience for users, but it also allows for a wider community of developers and makers to contribute and innovate on the project. It opens up new possibilities for interactive public spaces and provides a fun and engaging way for people to interact with technology.
The Pinect project is fully open-source, and all of its software for Android and Arduino is available on GitHub. The repository includes everything needed to build and replicate the Pinect, including the 3D case model, PCB, and scheme layout.
The 3D case model can be used to 3D print the housing for the Pinect, while the PCB and scheme layout can be used to assemble the electronic components. All the necessary software, including the Android app and Arduino sketch, can be found in the repository and can be easily compiled and loaded onto the device.
The Game Gear is an 8-bit fourth generation handheld game console released by Sega on October 6, 1990, in Japan, in April 1991 throughout North America and Europe, and during 1992 in Australia. The Game Gear primarily competed with Nintendo's Game Boy, the Atari Lynx, and NEC's TurboExpress. It shares much of its hardware with the Master System, and can play Master System games through the use of an adapter. Sega positioned the Game Gear, which had a full-color backlit screen with a landscape format, as a technologically superior handheld to the Game Boy.
The Sega CD, released as the Mega-CD in most regions outside North America and Brazil, is a CD-ROM accessory for the Sega Genesis developed and produced by Sega as part of the fourth generation of video game consoles. It was released on December 12, 1991, in Japan, October 15, 1992, in North America, and April 2, 1993, in Europe. The Sega CD plays CD games and adds hardware functionality such as a faster CPU and graphic enhancements such as sprite scaling and rotation. It can also play audio CDs and CD+G discs.
A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to a television or other display devices and controlled with a separate game controller, or handheld consoles, which include their own display unit and controller functions built into the unit and which can be played anywhere. Hybrid consoles combine elements of both home and handheld consoles.
The 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, also referred to as simply 3DO, is a home video game console developed by The 3DO Company. Conceived by entrepreneur and Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins, the 3DO was not a console manufactured by the company itself, but a set of specifications, originally designed by Dave Needle and Robert J. Mical of New Technologies Group, that could be licensed by third parties. Panasonic produced the first models in 1993, and further renditions of the hardware were released afterwards by GoldStar, Sanyo, Creative Labs, and Samsung Electronics.
A game controller, gaming controller, or simply controller, is an input device or input/output device used with video games or entertainment systems to provide input to a video game. Input devices that have been classified as game controllers include keyboards, mouses, gamepads, and joysticks, as well as special purpose devices, such as steering wheels for driving games and light guns for shooting games. Controllers designs have evolved to include directional pads, multiple buttons, analog sticks, joysticks, motion detection, touch screens and a plethora of other features.
A console game is a type of video game consisting of images and often sounds generated by a video game console, which are displayed on a television or similar audio-video system, and that can be manipulated by a player. This manipulation usually takes place using a handheld device connected to the console, called a controller. The controller generally contains several buttons and directional controls such as analogue joysticks, each of which has been assigned a purpose for interacting with and controlling the images on the screen. The display, speakers, console, and controls of a console can also be incorporated into one small object known as a handheld game.
A urinal is a sanitary plumbing fixture for urination only. Urinals are often provided in public toilets for male users in Western countries. They are usually used in a standing position. Urinals can be with manual flushing, automatic flushing, or without flushing, as is the case for waterless urinals. They can be arranged as single sanitary fixtures or in a trough design without privacy walls. Urinals designed for females also exist but are rare. It is possible for females to use male urinals with a female urination device.
Multi-monitor, also called multi-display and multi-head, is the use of multiple physical display devices, such as monitors, televisions, and projectors, in order to increase the area available for computer programs running on a single computer system. Research studies show that, depending on the type of work, multi-head may increase the productivity by 50–70%.
An electronic game is a game that uses electronics to create an interactive system with which a player can play. Video games are the most common form today, and for this reason the two terms are often used interchangeably. There are other common forms of electronic game including handheld electronic games, standalone systems, and exclusively non-visual products.
Combat flight simulators are vehicle simulation games, amateur flight simulation computer programs used to simulate military aircraft and their operations. These are distinct from dedicated flight simulators used for professional pilot and military flight training which consist of realistic physical recreations of the actual aircraft cockpit, often with a full-motion platform.
A dedicated console is a video game console that is limited to one or more built-in video game or games, and is not equipped for additional games that are distributed via ROM cartridges, discs, downloads or other digital media. Dedicated consoles were very popular in the first generation of video game consoles until they were gradually replaced by second-generation video game consoles that use ROM cartridges.
The Sega Genesis, known as the Mega Drive outside North America, is a 16-bit fourth generation home video game console developed and sold by Sega. It was Sega's third console and the successor to the Master System. Sega released it in 1988 in Japan as the Mega Drive, and in 1989 in North America as the Genesis. In 1990, it was distributed as the Mega Drive by Virgin Mastertronic in Europe, Ozisoft in Australasia, and Tec Toy in Brazil. In South Korea, it was distributed by Samsung Electronics as the Super Gam*Boy and later the Super Aladdin Boy.
A female urinal is a urinal designed for the female anatomy to allow for ease of use by women and girls. Different models enable urination in standing, semi-squatting, or squatting postures, but usually without direct bodily contact with the toilet. Sitting models also exist, and are designed for body contact with the urinal.
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A flight simulation video game refers to the simulation of various aspects of flight or the flight environment for purposes other than flight training or aircraft development. A significant community of simulation enthusiasts is supported by several commercial software packages, as well as commercial and homebuilt hardware. Open-source software that is used by the aerospace industry like FlightGear, whose flight dynamics engine (JSBSim) is used in a 2015 NASA benchmark to judge new simulation code to space industry standards, is also available for private use. A popular type of flight simulators video games are combat flight simulators, which simulate combat air operations from the pilot and crew's point of view. Combat flight simulation titles are more numerous than civilian flight simulators due to variety of subject matter available and market demand.
Virtua Tennis is a series of tennis simulation video games started in 1999 by Sega AM3. The player competes through tennis tournaments and various arcade modes. While originally released for arcades, all games in the series have been ported to other platforms, including most major consoles.
The hacking of consumer electronics is an increasingly common practice which users perform in order to customize and modify their devices beyond what is typically possible. This activity has a long history, dating from the days of early computer, programming, and electronics hobbyists.
A pissoir is a French invention, common in Europe, that provides a urinal in public space with a lightweight structure. The availability of pissoirs aims to reduce urination onto buildings, sidewalks, or streets. They can be freestanding and without screening, with partial screening, or fully enclosed.
In video games with online gaming functionality, also called cross-compatible play, cross-platform play, crossplay, or cross-play describes the ability of players using different video game hardware to play with each other simultaneously. It is commonly applied to the ability for players using a game on a specific video game console to play alongside a player on a different hardware platform such as another console or a computer. A related concept is cross-save, where the player's progress in a game is stored in separate servers, and can be continued in the game but on a different hardware platform.
GPD XD is an Android-based handheld game console produced by the Chinese company GamePad Digital, released in late 2015. It is similar in form to a Nintendo 3DS XL, has a single, capacitive touch-screen, and is optimized for running emulators and other native Android software. It was succeeded by the GPD XD Plus, which has a smoother hinge and runs on Android 7.
