Safety

Please understand that despite the safety precautions described below, safety of this product is entirely dependent on the user following ALL safety guidelines, not only those described in the safety video, but also all those mentioned in the User's Guide as well as the common sense required in the operation of any electrical device or power tool. Additionally, device safety is dependent upon the absence of manufacturing defects and other factors which could modify the circuit, such as exposure to water and mechanical stress. Always carry out the "pulse test" procedure described in the User's Guide the first time you use the device, and every time the receiver is opened and closed, to change batteries or for other reasons. This procedure simply involves testing a low pulse when the chastity device is not secured, so that if anything unexpected should occur, the electrodes can be disconnected immediately.

Electrical Safety

The real measure of pulse intensity lies in the amount of current (amperes) forced through the body, and not the voltage. Current depends on voltage and resistance according to Ohm's law: I = V / R. The DreamLover 2000 uses a factory defined voltage of up to 30V modulated electronically to achieve different pulses.

AC is said to be four to five times more powerful than DC. For one thing, AC causes more severe muscular contractions. Also, it stimulates sweating that lowers the skin resistance. It is also closely associated to fibrillation, whereas DC is not. The DreamLover 2000 uses DC current.

Most pulses are a simple ON/OFF pulse lasting a fraction of a second. At an average resistance between your male's glans and scrotum of 500 ohms, the total current flowing through the penis is around 52 mA (milliamperes). Empirical studies have shown that the "jolt" sensation induced by the current vanishes quickly below 45mA and is replaced by an annoying electrical "sting". Below 30mA the pulse is barely perceived.

Though 50mA may seem like a lot in electrical terms, you must remember that the pulse is only active for a fraction of a second, placing the actual energy delivered into the very low millijoule range. Series resistors are part of our safety circuit; these limit the current flowing through the electrodes, just in case. Additionally, the pulse has redundant "ON" switches. Even a catastrophic switch failure will NOT result in an open gate. As if that weren't enough the step up circuitry feeds into a capacitor which has limited capacity; therefore, only a small amount of charge at the required pulse voltage is stored at any given time.

To summarize:

• The DreamLover 2000 uses mostly DC current, which is intrinsically less problematic than AC
• Though powerful, the current pulse is very brief; this achieves a very surprising "jolt" effect without pushing a lot of energy through the body
• Testing has revealed that even with moist/semi-wet skin, the DreamLover 2000's pulse strength is not sufficient to cause actual damage to the skin

Chemical Safety

• All our products are made from RoHS compliant parts; RoHS is a european standard prohibiting toxic materials such as lead to be used in electronic devices and it represents far greater protection than current United States regulations
• The electrodes are made of stainless steel commonly used in cookware.
• The remote control contains a UL certified lithium polymer battery which has been tested for safety in conformance with the CE mark. The worst case scenario of shorting the battery terminals without any protection circuitry resulted in mild swelling of the pack but no combustion.

Lab testing

Aside from in-house testing and safety precautions, the DreamLover 2000 has passed lab safety testing for the CE mark which includes being zapped with 8 kilovolts ESD discharges, bombarded with radio interferences across the spectrum, having several key points on the circuit board shorted, and more (pictures available in the R&D Museum). What this means in practice is that you can be confident that nothing can happen to your device in an ordinary environment that will compromise its safety features.

Usage Safety

Current flowing through human tissue carries substantial risks, which users must become aware of before attempting to operate any electric stimulation device. Our User's Guide contains a very long list of "things you shouldn't do" in order to minimize the risk involved in using this device - things such as wearing a DreamLover 2000 while driving a motorvehicle, operating the wireless link without auditory and visual contact with the wearer and many more. Please see the User's Guide's safety section. If these safety precautions are not followed, no design precautions will matter. The safety video included with the DreamLover 2000 CD-ROM is shown on the right side of the page. However it does not include all necessary safety measures, just a quick overview. Therefore, please always refer to the User's Guide before attempting to operate the device.

Fail-safe circuit and failure mode analysis

A device designed for long term wear on the human body must necessarily include robust safety mechanisms.

Current limiting resistors

The DreamLover 2000 has two redundant current limiting resistors, which provide partial protection when the body's resistance between the electrodes is too low. They are intended to provide a safety buffer for when the safety guidelines are not followed and the electrodes are applied to low conductivity tissue. Passive components such as resistors have negligible failure rates.

Transistors and "open gate" prevention

The circuit uses a charge pump to convert voltage from the battery's main voltage to the pulse level. In order for the pulse to be delivered, a particular sequence of events needs to occur so that no single point of failure can result in continuous stimulation.

First, one transistor must be activated to switch on the current conversion circuitry. High voltage charge is stored in a capacitor. Analog to Digital conversion is used to monitor the capacitor's voltage. When the capacitor is full, the charge pump is first deactivated, then another transistor is opened to deliver the pulse.

The capacitor has limited size, so if the second transistor fails just when the stimulus is being activated and the capacitor is full, the charge will quickly die out producing a stimulus that is a few times larger than the HIGH level pulse, but not orders of magnitude larger. The capacitor is connected in such a way as to self-discharge after activation within 10 seconds, so if the second transistor fails at any time other than the small time window in which the capacitor is being charged, the male will feel a continuous, very tiny tingling sensation caused by the low battery voltage passing through the electrodes, and will have advance warning that something has happened.

On the other hand, because charge conversion is very current intensive, if the first transistor fails the battery will run out in about 3.5 hours. Both transistors would have to fail within this time period, and, all other circuitry would need to remain perfectly functional, in order for the device to give a continuous shock. The likelihood of this happening is astronomically small. Even then, the maximum voltage produced would never exceed 30V, the actual limit of the current conversion chips used.

Transistor failure is a very rare event and is mostly related to temperature. The DreamLover 2000 receiver does not experience high temperatures because it is body worn. Below 40 degrees it normally takes 1.79 million hours (207 years) before a 10% possibility of failure is seen. Even in the event of a failure, the transistor might "fail open", disabling the pulse with no adverse safety implications.

Although these theoretical values are very small, mechanical or electrical stresses can damage electronic components. Improper receiver closure resulting in high forces applied on the components, allowing water to leak inside the enclosure and other forms of damages to the circuitry can alter the device's functioning. For this reason the "Pulse Test" is a mandatory precaution on first use and every time the receiver is opened and closed. This precaution consists in delivering a low level test pulse with the cage unsecured (so that you're able to disconnect the electrodes immediately in case something unexpected occurs). Once this test has been carried out and the receiver is stable and protected by the enclosure, little can happen to adversely affect functionality.

Radio interference protection

The radio frequency circuitry used to communicate with the DreamLover 2000 uses digital spread spectrum signals with cyclic redundancy checks (CRC) and pseudo-random noise. Both the CRC values and PN codes are specific to the DreamLover 2000 device. These are strategies that make the likelihood of random abient noise being interpreted as a valid data packet nearly impossible. When a packet gets through the PN filter, it will again be filtered by a CRC check (the receiver's LED blinks red very briefly). Even if a valid PN code and CRC were detected from ambient noise, which never happened in years of testing, the packet would be screened against the DreamLover 2000 protocol which only uses 40 values out of 16 bytes (the chance of this last step alone is 40 in 256^16, a number with 38 zeros).

Each receiver is configured by the user to listen to the owned devices so there is similarly no possibility of interference from other users. As if that weren't enough our software allows you to move all your devices to one of 98 channels.