How Does the Shocking Roulette Electrical Toy Work?

[chigga]

i am doing an EEI on electrical toys. the toy I've chosen is Shocking Roulette, can anyone tell me how they work or link me to a site which has what parts are used etc.

 

[pervect]

What's an EEI?

I never heard of "shocking roulette, google finds

http://www.zymetrical.com/product.asp?3=622&dc=3h5b42e&gclid=CIqw3JXboYUCFRsmPwodYG2GvQ

I don't know how they work.

For back pain, they make "shocking" devices with a more medicinal purpose, called "Tens" units. Tens units work by generating very short pulses through pulse transformers, IIRC. (The pulse transformer raises the voltage of an otherwise low-voltage pulse). The idea behind the Tens unit is to stimulate nerves without having a long enough electrical impulse to stimulate muscles, even if the pulse reaches a muscle (such as, worst case, the heart).

There's a fair amount of info on tens units available on the WWW. You might even find schematics.

I think there are some perscription/licensiing/regulatory issues for medical devices like the Tens unit - the "shocking roulette" doesn't look like it meets any of those. The physical design of the unit I saw on google looks like any current generated would only flow through the finger and not reach the heart.

The "killer" in electricity is any path through the heart. If a path through he heart is avoided, the main damange mechanism for electrical shock is by heating (burning) as far as I know, but I'm not an expert.

 

[Danger]

I know pretty much nothing about electronics, but I might have a bit of an insight into this. A friend of mine once had a piezoelectric butane lighter that didn't work properly. Just a valve problem, but of course I had to disassemble the whole thing to see what made it tick. When I put it back together, I inadvertently left out a small mica spacer that apparently shielded the case from the spark mechanism. Got a nasty bit of surprise when I tried to light the thing.
After I put the spacer back where it belonged, there was no problem.

 

[chigga]

EEI = Extended Experimental Investigation

Shock Roulette is a game for 4 people and acts like russian roulette where someone is randomly shocked through the finger...