I work in the engineering world. I get to see new gadgets and devices. Periodically I see applications for new gadgets in the Gentlemen's club. Here are some of the ideas of come up with. They range from really simple to the really impractical.
Purse Drawer
This is a just a simple drawer like the glove box in your car. A dancer would be able to store her purse there when she's on stage. Most stages I see have no practical place for a purse. The dancer has to stash her purse some place and try to keep an eye on it. This would be a small box built into the stage out. The door would have a spring or bungee cord pulling it closed. This is mostly for middle stages that are completely surrounded by seats, where there is no back wall to put a purse. It would still be vulnerable, but a sneak thief wouldn't be to reach in quickly and snag a purse. It would make it a lot more obvious it somebody had to open the drawer then reach in.
Self Cleaning Pole
It always struck me that most of the time dancers really don't clean the pole. They just spray on some cleaner and kind of smear it around. It really depends on how anti-bacterial the cleaner is. Considering how most owners like to spend money, I figure most bottles are filled with tap water, a dash a Windex for scent and not much else. I was imagining a little sphere that would wrap around the pole. Kind of like the New Year's Eve ball in Time square. Rather than a chemical cleanser, the ball would contain UV bulbs that sterilizers use. The UV bulbs would be completely enclosed to avoid sun burning or blinding the audience. It would be motorized, at rest it would sit at the very top of the pole, then at touch of a button it would fire the UV bulbs climb down then up the pole, burning all those evil microscopic critters with ultra-violet light along the way. Ideally this would occur when a new dancer took the stage. You can add some safety features like a strain gage that would detect when a dancer was using the pole preventing any close encounters. Considering how well dancers get along, it wouldn't be too surprising to hear about a dancer "accidentally" starting the cleaner while another dancer was hanging upside down. I would also add a heavy cloth ring around the aperture to wipe the pole clean of dirt in general as at traveled up and down.
I'm not sure if the UV light would be effective enough to kill the germs quickly enough and not make the cleaner too slow. The cleaner could be tethered to AC, with a spooler hidden up in the top keep the cable out of the way. I'm not sure what the long term effect on the brass would be either.
Scheduling Kiosk
This is an attempt to automate when a dancer appears on stage next. It would be a three part system. One part would be a kiosk that sort of looks a Megatouch machine. It would back in the dressing room. The dancer would check in at the kiosk and check in when she wanted to go on rotation. A second screen would be at the DJ booth that would list what display the complete rotation. The DJ would have complete control to alter and delete the rotation. The third part would be some sort of race track lighting scheme. The dancers name or icon would appear on it. The idea behind the third part a dancer would be able to look up and see when she was up next. It would be a relatively simple matter to add software to automatically change the rotation from one to two or more stages at a touch of a button. Conceivably you can add some details with the dancer's name. She would create a library of song titles or genre she wanted to hear would stored her name. That way when her name popped up to go on stage, the songs she wanted to automatically appear on the DJs screen. This would also have the benefit (or curse depending on your point of view) logging when a dancer checked in and how many times she (or another dancer) has gone on stage.
Intelligent lighting
I got this idea from a new part I'm currently designing with at work. It's a tiny part that can detect both how far an object is away (up to 1,5 meters if the specs are to be believed) and how bright the ambient light is. The target market for this is cell phones. Most smart phones have light sensors the automatically adjust the screen brightness depending on how bright the current lighting conditions are. In bright day light the screen is at full brightness for readability, then if you go into a dark room the screen is dimmed to keep from blinding you and saving battery power. The distance sensor would turn off the screen when an object was directly next to the phone. That way when you put the phone up to your ear or you stuff the phone in your purse the phone would turn off the screen to save power.
I think you could merge that with LED lighting strips. The strips would be mounted on the rack pointed in toward the dancer. The strips would be to detect where the dancer is on the stage. You could create a spot like effect that would track the dance around the stage. The lighting should be color and a little subtle. Most dancers don't want a 150000 lumen spot light exposing every last flaw in glorious detail. But I think you could come with some pretty cool effects.
I've got other ideas I'm trying to sort out. Natalia had an idea of a money system that would let a dancer take her stage fees and send them too their locker via a vacuum tube system. That's a touch impractical, but their maybe a way of putting together a safe with programmable codes like in motel, with multiple sockets like a lazy susan
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