Advice on shocking ring design.. (piezoelectric? remote switch?)

[Cha0ticBliss]

Not begging for advice here as much as I am wondering if anyone already has offhand knowledge of these things seeing as I will research into them further but here it goes...

I am doing this project for a freshman engineering course where I'm designing a ring that will shock your finger from a remote trigger.

I'm familiar with IR switches, but for this I'll need something that will be able to flip a switch remotely from up to 10-20 feet with some small obstructions. Any ideas? I'm guessing maybe a sound activated trigger that is out of audible range may work... but i dunno

As for the ring. It will need to be able to deliver a fairly painful shock :p but nothing too serious.

1. One idea is to use a piezoelectric striker device. These can create high voltages without a power source (apart from the striker part). The only problem with this is that the cylinder will stick out from the ring and I'm not sure how small they can be nonetheless. This is a hypothetical design though, so if I figure out how to modify the general piezoelectric striker design to conform to the shape of the ring, that would be good...(even though I wouldn't necessarily have the means to create it)

2. The second idea is to just basically design the ring as a (hollow cored) capacitor. This would be good because it would conform to the shape of the ring, but I'd have to worry about dissipation of charge over the 12 hrs or so that the ring will be away from any sort of charging dock.

[StealthedHunter]

so u just have to design it not really make it? because if you make it then do a tutorial this would be really cool.

[Cha0ticBliss]

Well I am designing the best option assuming it went into production. (Which it won't) I probably could make a tut on how to make the prototype which will use a pre-made piezoelectric striker most likely if I can find one.. Anywho here's a diagram of a possible design for the piezoelectric striker element. It is inside of a cutout of the ring. (the rest of the ring doesn't really have any electrical components)



The basic idea is, an outside signal will trip the clip which will release the striker to hit the quartz. This will send a charge temporarily through the two leads to the contacts on the finger. Still need to look into it more but this is what I got so far.

I still have no idea how to compute what kind of voltages a set-up like this would produce because the equations have so many variables and deal with matrices which I'm not familiar with beyond the basics.

[alentris]

I'd say use a flash capacitor, although that might be a tad large...

[folklord36]

Not to challenge ur whole idea but why not make it a necklace or a watch both would give you more room to work with to fit all of this and a remote trigger mechanism in a ring seems a bit ambitious as you stated you don't really have specialized tools to fab ur own parts and such.

[StealthedHunter]

well ya u have good points folklord, but imho a ring would be way cooler than a necklace or watch. A hat would be kinda funny though.

[Cha0ticBliss]

Well, it would be challenging but not impossible. I have access to all the fab tools the school has.