Trippy device

February 14, 2013 7:49 AM

So years and years and years ago at some hippie festival or other there was a guy hawking these goggle things. The gimmick was this: you'd close your eyes, look towards the sun or other bright light, and blow into a little tube that would spin fans built into the eyepieces which caused a strobe effect which was had a surprisingly psychedelic effect. Anybody else remember these? Do they still exist? What are they called? Are they for sale anywhere online? Relevant search terms have been taken over by a pricey Nike product which is not at all what I'm looking for.

Yes, I do in fact feel a little bit ridiculous about asking this question.

posted by ook to shopping (13 answers total)

Dude, you gotta beware of the brown acid.

Is this close to what you're looking for?
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 7:53 AM on February 14

A while ago Make Magazine had instructions on building something very similar, except they use LEDs for the strobing. They called them the Brain Machine or Trip Glasses. They sell a kit.
posted by zsazsa at 7:55 AM on February 14 [3 favorites]

But you see if I can find this then I won't need the brown acid...

zsazsa is on the right track, though I wonder if LEDs would be bright enough to cause the same effect... so I'll expand the question: anyone who's used that kit or similar, are the LEDs bright enough to cause the same effect?
posted by ook at 8:09 AM on February 14

This sounds like a variation of the Dream Machine.
posted by dortmunder at 8:17 AM on February 14

Solar Meditation Bow by Palu Rainbow Song.
posted by Lorin at 8:23 AM on February 14 [1 favorite]

I have used the ones sold by Make Magazine, but not the ones you describe, so I can't compare their effects, but I totally saw shapes and colors and patterns with the ones I tried. Also, I felt altered in a similar way to hypnosis or other trance states. It was pretty great.
posted by spindrifter at 8:27 AM on February 14

Awesome; I'm sold. Bonus points to Lorin (and the awesomely bearded Mr. Song) for the low-tech version.
posted by ook at 8:40 AM on February 14

I owned one of those. It was purple plastic. Probably ordered it out of the back of a magazine in the 90's, I used to use it while sitting in my parent's pool on bright sunny days, it worked fairly well.

I feel certain if I could remember the exact name of the thing it'd be possible to find one on eBay, or maybe even still for sale new. "Daytripper" sounds right but brings up too many unrelated results in Google.

No idea what happened to it, I didn't use it a whole lot but it worked so I wouldn't have thrown it away. It was a thick, rigid plastic so it may have cracked at some point.
posted by NoAccount at 10:13 AM on February 14

anyone who's used that kit or similar, are the LEDs bright enough to cause the same effect?

Oh yes. Definitely. Modern LEDs put out a ton of light.
posted by Mars Saxman at 12:48 PM on February 14

Heh. No idea as to the product's name, but I do recall those -- used to see them at Dead shows back in the late 80's/early 90's. The ones I remember were sized and shaped like opaque swimmers' face masks. Good times, good times...
posted by mosk at 12:58 PM on February 14

We called these things "LSD-simulators" in the mid 90s.
posted by fondle at 5:00 AM on February 15

If you have an Android device, you can get the same effect (especially similar to the Make magazine project, mentioned above) with Trip Glasses, free on the Play Store at:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=sk.gk2.tripglasses

I'd guess there is something for the iPhone also.
posted by mbarryf at 7:33 AM on February 15

Followup: I was all set to buy the kit from the Maker Store, but they turn out to charge insultingly high shipping rates -- srsly folks $12.50 for postal delivery? -- so I wound up buying what is clearly the exact same thing preassembled from "tripglasses.com" (which domain name I feel kind of dumb for not having stumbled on in the first place.)

They work.
posted by ook at 8:15 AM on March 14