Hardware (fPCBs & schematics) for UIST 2026's RingIO: An Eyes-Free Smart Ring with Inputs via Touch and Outputs via Touch

This prototype relies on electrical stimulation and capacitive sensing. We utilized existing kits for realizing each modality, namely eTactileKit for electrotactile stimulation and Bella's Trill Sensor for touch sensing. The combined implementation should be as follows:

We provide two FPCBs in PCB-and-schematics, each with 16 electrodes that fit in the eTactileKit's FPC connector (16 pin) and also in the Bella's Trill Sensor's FPC connector (16 pin, though the fit is harder for this FPC, so we recommend sanding if needed). There are two versions provided, one in a T-shape (FPC comes out sideways from electrodes, which we used for our prototypes) and a linear-shape version (FPC follows in a straight line from electrodes, which we used for the user study).

When using or building upon this work in an academic publication, please consider citing as follows:

Lonnie Chien and Pedro Lopes. 2026. RingIO: An Eyes-Free Smart Ring with Inputs via Touch and Outputs via Touch. In The 39th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ’26), November 02–05, 2026, Detroit, MI, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 8 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3830398.3830588

For questions or if something is wrong with this repository, contact Lonnie Chien at [email protected].