Connected Health Webinar Highlights Unique Health-Related Project Builds
Presented by Nordic Semiconductor, November's Impact Spotlights shared a look at some connected health builds from the Hackster community.
Healthcare has taken advantage of the latest technologies to enable everything from remote care to wearables that monitor vitals. The technologies are designed to improve patient health and outcomes using wearables, mobile apps, telemedicine platforms, IoT devices and more. Hackster’s latest webinar in its November Impact Spotlights series focused on connected health, shedding light on several innovative health-centered projects built by a six-pack of talented individuals. Hosted by Hackster’s Alex Glow, the event served to provide a detailed overview of those builds, why they were created and what it took to build them.
Guest speaker Adam Taylor was on hand to present his HUMS (Health and Monitoring Units) platform designed to monitor and log the stresses and environmental impact on electronic systems. Those systems can include everything from aircraft subsystems to power generation. His design combines an Arty S7-50 equipped with a Xilinx Spartan-7 FPGA, a PMod NAV (three-axis accelerometer, three-axis gyroscope, three-axis magnetometer, and barometer) and a mod HYGRO temperature and humidity sensor.
Taylor used his HUMS system to create data sets to enable failure and anomaly detection, which was then analyzed by machine learning to detect issues in real-time. While the HUMS platform is designed to monitor the health of electronics, it could be adapted for use in the medical industry to keep tabs on expensive equipment, such as MRI machines, heart monitors and surgical robots.
Hackster user 'donutsorelse' was another guest speaker during the session to highlight his novel Smart Hiking Stick, which can aid the visually impaired to navigate and stay safe. Donutsorelse’s build takes advantage of a DFRobot UNIHIKER single-board computer, Blues' Note Carrier boards, ultrasonic sensors, a DFRobot Gravity GNSS GPS module, an LED strip, and a solar-powered power bank.
The Smart Hiking Stick enables blind users to navigate using ultrasonic sensors, which alert the user to objects in their path using audible tones that denote distance. It also allows for voice commands that let users interact with specific functions such as getting weather reports, the time, directions and more. The Smart Hiking Stick’s feature set also makes it useful for just about everyone going on outdoor hikes. It includes LED lights to illuminate surroundings, GPS and GNSS to pinpoint locations, built-in wireless connectivity to connect with other devices, a fall alert system, geofencing capabilities and more.
Embedded systems enthusiast Evan Rust was another guest speaker who highlighted his Open Source Pulse Oximeter, which is designed to monitor the user’s respiratory system. Rust built his device during the onset of the COVID pandemic, making it a platform that alerted users that they may have contracted the virus, but it’s still incredibly useful today as a wearable medical device.
Rust built his USB-powered pulse oximeter around an Arduino Nano and a Maxim Integrated MAX30102 pulse and heart rate sensor, along with a DFRobot Gravity I2C OLED-2864 display. The hardware is housed in a 3D-printed enclosure with a cutout for the sensor for easy finger placement. Readings are sent to the display, which is anchored to a top lid, making it easy to read.
Mithun Das also participated in the connected health webinar, where he highlighted his Touchless ATM, which uses augmented reality (AR) and a touchless keypad to interact with ATMs, gas station pumps, self-checkout systems, and more. Das designed his build using a NodeMCU ESP8266 Breakout Board to program the ATM, an SG90 micro-servo motor to dispense money, a 4x4 matrix keypad and a phone app to handle the AR.
The Touchless ATM works by imposing a virtual keypad on a digital image in real-time. The AR app sends data to the ESP8266 via MQTT, which allows the user to interact with the ATM. Simple enough. Das developed his Touchless ATM as a way to mitigate the COVID-19 virus, letting users interact with public interfaces without touching them.
Guest speaker Ahmed Ramzi detailed his Sensor Glove for Sign Language Translation, which converts sign language gestures into auditory speech and text. Ramzi also made use of the popular Arduino Nano for his build, plus with flex sensors, an analog accelerometer, an IMU, and a Bluetooth module.
The glove works by using flex sensors to measure the bending of fingers according to sign gestures and outputs changes in resistances corresponding to the amount of bending. The accelerometer measures the linear movements of the hand on the X, Y, and Z axes and outputs different values of X, Y, and Z corresponding to the movement on these axes.
All the data is then processed by the Nano, which translates the hand movements and gestures into auditory speech and texts. The build could use more finesse, maybe house the hardware in a hand-conforming 3D-printed enclosure. That said, it’s a great design that can benefit anyone who doesn’t know sign language.
Guest speaker Naveen Kumar was also on hand and presented his Snoring Detection with Syntiant Neural Decision Processor, which he describes as “A snore-no-more device embedded in your pillow that aims to help those who suffer from obstructive sleep apnea.”
Kumar designed his Snoring Detector around an Arduino Nicla Voice that comes equipped with an NDP120 Neural Decision processor, allowing it to run multiple AI algorithms. It also packs an Adafruit DRV2605L haptic motor controller and a Vibrating Mini Motor Disc.
The Snoring Detector was trained using multiple snoring data sets to identify specific patterns that correlate to sleep apnea. The platform collects new audio samples from an onboard microphone, passes them to the NDP120 for classification, and triggers a haptic motor if snoring is sensed. The build is sound, no pun intended, and could be beneficial for those who have trouble with sleep apnea.
Kumar was the last guest speaker who attended the connected health event, which was enjoyable and informative on what can be done with off-the-shelf hardware and a bit of innovation. The project builds were detailed, and the speakers provided easy-to-follow explanations, making it easy even for beginners to recreate their builds. Although links to their respective project pages were not provided during the session, they were easy to find and listed in this article for those interested.
