Multiplayer Buttplug

A pressure-sensing, vibrating buttplug that lets a group feel each other’s pleasure, in the same room or spread across the world. An own version and own form, reworking Rudolf Arnold’s PLAY ME.

Each plug measures how hard the body around it squeezes. That pressure is sent to everyone else who is playing. All squeezes are added up into one world power, and every plug vibrates with it. You feel the group, the group feels you. Next to the vibration, a screen shows every player as a moving blob of light whose colour shifts with the world power.

It is part of an ongoing practice of visualising orgasmic rhythms: treating pleasure as a relational signal rather than an individual event. It is one of the attempts in Collective Resonance.

How it works

A silicone tube is coiled around the 3D-printed shaft and runs to an air pressure sensor (MPXV7002DP). When the muscles around the plug contract, the tube is pressed together and the sensor reads the change. A small ESP32-C3 board reads the sensor, sends the value over wifi and drives a vibration motor in the base. The plugs don’t need to be in the same room: each one connects to a small message server, and every plug calculates the world power itself, so if one player drops out the others keep playing. No plug at hand? Join from a phone: hold the screen to squeeze, and Android phones vibrate along.

Make your own

• buttplug-jokecaimo.stl: 3D model, 37 × 37 × 105 mm, with a hollow base for the electronics
• multiplayer-buttplug-code.zip: firmware for the ESP32-C3, the visualisation page and the original local version
• Rudolf Arnold, PLAY ME (PDF): the research this version builds on

Print it in a body-safe way: smooth the surface, seal it, and always use it with a condom over the plug. Wiring, flashing and connecting are explained step by step on the project page. 18+.

The zine

Riso-printed at Samenschool. Available in the shop, and as part of the Multiplayer Buttplug workshop.

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Design, electronics, code and zine by Joke Caimo, 2026. Based on Rudolf Arnold, “PLAY ME: interactive sonification of sexual arousal in long-distance relationships”, Paladyn, Journal of Behavioral Robotics 11 (2020), 250–270, doi:10.1515/pjbr-2020-0014. Shared under CC BY 4.0: use it, remake it, let it mutate, and credit Joke Caimo and Rudolf Arnold.