The Hackaday Prize has had a few medical devices make the semifinalist cut, and of course wearables are on the list. How about implantables? That’s what Bionic Yourself 2.0 (or B10N1C) is doing with an implantable microcontroller, battery, and sensor system.
The hardware in B10N1C includes a electromyography sensor for measuring muscle activity, an accelerometer, a vibration motor, RFID reader/writer, temperature sensor, and – get this – a LED bar graph that will shine a light through the skin. That’s something we’ve never seen before, and if you’re becoming a cyborg, it’s a nice feature to have.
As with anything you would implant in your body, safety is a prime consideration for Bionic.the Lithium battery can be overcharged (yes, through a wireless charging setup) to 10V without a risk of fire or explosion, can be hit with a hammer, and can even be punctured. The enclosure is medical grade silicone, the contacts are medical grade stainless steel, and there’s a humidity sensor inside that will radio a message saying its time to remove the device if the moisture level in the enclosure increases.
Because the device is implanted under the skin, being able to recharge and update the code without a physical connection is the name of the game. There’s a coil for wireless charging, and a lot of work is going into over the air firmware updating. It’s an astonishing project, and while most people probably won’t opt for a cyborg implant, it will look really cool.
The project featured in this post is a quarterfinalist in The Hackaday Prize.
I would be the first one to get one of those. Inbuild led’s under the skin, hell yeah :D
I’m sure TSA would love this…
Reminds me of this:
http://grindhousewetware.blogspot.ca/2014/03/grinding-high-stakes-endeavor.html?m=1
wow, that is a large implant…
This and implants for measurement should have minimal impact on the system they are measuring as well. This only measures heat and time and given that it was apparently generating a significant amount of heat on it’s own I would say that this was a test in making a really dangerous and impractical watch. The size of the unit and the fact it still wasn’t laid out properly just makes me wonder what they could have possibly gotten out of the exercise.
It just can’t have been very clearly thought out, “due to unknown risks” just makes me shake my head. If you’re sticking stuff into the body you don’t do unknown risks, at least not if you don’t have a research lab inside a hospital.
good lord. i’ve seen the results of a li-po fire in a pants pocket. that happening under your skin is one of the worst things i can imagine. ugh.
That lipo looks a little swollen
Good luck getting on an airplane with something bulging out of your arm like that..
They have X-rays in airports now.
Oh god, literally 0 consideration for biocompatibility of that enclosure. This gives transhumanists a bad name.
Where would you go to actually get something like this implanted? I’ve had a similar idea for years, but I’m not sure where to get it implanted once its all good to go.
You have a body mod shop somewhere around you. Go find a tattoo shop *that has a drafting table somewhere in the shop* and ask them for a recommendation. You also might want to scope out BMEzine.
I just asked my GP. He even let me record the procedure.
My wife’s a GP but she refused – not on medical grounds but because “if I wanted to do something that stupid and geeky I’d have to do our myself”. I found a piercer that did. However he did tell me about some problems with implanted neodymium magnets that used a medical grade silicone. It’s possible to rupture the coating.
Some may refuse for several reasons. First that they could have their licence revoked on ethical grounds, second, if something were to go horribly wrong there is no way that their malpractice insurance would cover it. To much risk for most professionals.
I already have a 125khz RFID tag in my left hand. This would be a perfect upgrade despite the size.
I have a 13.5MHz NFC tag in my left hand :)
I wonder if the b10n1c is compatible with MRI scanners.. wouldn’t expect it to be..
Does it contain ferric metal? Then no, it is not.
Amount of ferromagnetic material matters also. I have NFC implant from dangerousthings and it does become more visible on the skin when I ‘m touching 1T MRI wall when im inside. But it works afterwards.
This is the first THP entry that I can legitmately say is cool.
Awesome work.
Coils, under the skin? What could possibly go wrong :)
Should be loads of fun during a MRI
Nothing another incision couldn’t fix.
This is stupid and likely to backfire on the people that are ridiculous enough to implant a pcb into themselves.
Pacemakers. They have pcb’s in them, the same of colloquial implants. Your point was?
Damnit, you beat me to it. lol
To be fair those are not homemade.
Pacemaker? Or is that just a fluke?
what about strong external EMF like from a high voltage discharge? … if it can survive that ill take one!
We seem to be getting closer to the vertebrae implant from Robotic Nation. I’m sort of all for it. Australian Project here we come.
As someone who got a magnet put in not that long ago, I am looking for something like this, kudos to this man, I will be first in line to get it put in!
GSM||GTFO
That looks incredibly uncomfortable.
Still the battery worries me, if it decides to explode they’ll be calling you lefty for the rest of your life, what about a stuporcap?
Well battery wories me a bit too. You could always try to make containement vessel for it but that would increase size and it’s already bit to big to be comfortable (at least in the arm i have a “ton” of prime cusioning realestate on the waist).
I can only imagine how much fun this would be around a large tesla coil.
sigh.. tools
Judging from that X-ray, I think this person might have boneitis.
Why implant this in your arm? It has a built in vibrator, right? Implant it in your genitals. Surely somebody has actually done this before?
Why do they make this in regular pcb ? why not Flex pcb covered with some silicone – could be alot thinner (maybe durable) and alot larger (eg. flex strength strip) maybe incorporate a bio-battery based on glucose. that could ‘fix’ some potential hazards.
That’s way to big. but thats only a matter of time. If it would be the size of BLE micro from seedstudio i might consider it also regular pcb? takes ton of dpace needlesly flexible pcb would be much better.would reduce size not just by reduxtion of thickesn but also by making it possible to wrap around inside of case.
Still this is progress i saw a guy implant himself with well raspberry pi sized box… in his arm…
Anyone know of a biossafe casing material for homemade implant making? (of course then it would be sterilized)
The “x-ray” looks fake to me. Did he actually implant this-or does he just describe it as “implantable”? Nails are implantable, too, if you’ve got a nail gun; that does not mean it is a good idea.
Of course it’s fake, X-rays don’t show colour, unless you count false-colour software effects like thermal cameras often use.
All you get from an X-ray is the density.
I suspect the Bluetooth communication range will be highly disappointing for a device completely encapsulated in meat.
Nice idea (/me has BSc MElect) the use of a Li-Po battery gets me nervous but if it is as they say idiot proof then this shouldn’t make it any more dangerous than say a pacemaker or implanted hearing aid.
The bargraph sounds cool, I assume it has various sensors etc and with a standard array R/IR diode obtainable from Boots as a “nose allergy plug” it should work with any off the shelf BPW34 diode and with calibration be able to sense blood pressure as a function of HR and SpO2.
I would love to do this, but I’m too scared of the insertion and removal process haha. But seriously, I am a biomedical engineer. Let me know when you could use some help and I’ll be around. I don’t have a problem designing it to go in other peoples arm, just not mine lol.