Coronavirus Testing: CRISPR Technology Set To Streamline Viral Testing

May 27, 2020 by Dan Maloney 3 Comments

If we could run back 2020 to its beginning and get a do-over, chances are pretty good that we’d do a lot of things differently. There’s a ton of blame to go around on COVID-19, but it’s safe to say that one of the biggest failures of this whole episode has been the lack of cheap, quick, accurate testing for SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the current pandemic. It’s not for lack of information; after all, Chinese scientists published the sequence of the viral genome very early in the pandemic, and researchers the world over did the same for all the information they gleaned from the virus as it rampaged around the planet.

But leveraging that information into usable diagnostics has been anything but a smooth process. Initially, the only method of detecting the virus was with reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests, a fussy process that requires trained technicians and a well-equipped lab, takes days to weeks to return results, and can only tell if the patient has a current infection. Antibody testing has the potential for a quick and easy, no-lab-required test, but can only be used to see if a patient has had an infection at some time in the past.

What’s needed as the COVID-19 crisis continues is a test with the specificity and sensitivity of PCR combined with the rapidity and simplicity of an antibody test. That’s where a new assay, based on the latest in molecular biology methods and dubbed “STOPCovid” comes in, and it could play a major role in diagnostics now and in the future.

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Did Grandma Remember Her Pills? This Dispenser Tells You!

May 16, 2020 by Sven Gregori 4 Comments

Everything has to be smart these days, and while smartening things up is a good incentive to tip your own toes into the whole IoT field, many of these undertakings are oftentimes just solutions looking for a problem. Best case, however, you actually make someone’s life easier with it, or help a person in need. For [Guli Morad] and [Dekel Binyamin], it was a bit of both when they built their automated pill dispenser: help people dependent on taking medication, and ease the mind of those worrying whether they actually remembered to.

Using an ESP8266 and a rather simple construct comprised of a set of servos with plastic sheets attached, and a plastic tube with strategically placed cuts for each pill type, a predefined amount of each of the pills can be automatically dispensed into a box — either at a given time, or on demand — using a Node-RED web interface. A reed switch mounted on the box then monitors if it was actually opened within a set time, and if not, informs emergency contacts about it through the Telegram app. Sure, a tenacious medication recipient might easily fool the system, but not even adding a precision scale to make sure the pills are actually taken out could counter a pill-reluctant patient of such kind, so it’s safe to assume that this is primarily about preventing simple forgetfulness.

Their proof of concept is currently limited to only two different types of pills, but with enough PWM outputs to control the servos, this should be easily scalable to any amount. And while the built may not be as sophisticated as some pill dispensers we’ve seen entering the Hackaday Prize a few years back, it still gets its main task done. Plus, when it comes to people’s health, a good-enough solution is always better than a perfect idea that remains unimplemented.

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A Pulse Oximeter From Very Little

May 16, 2020 by Jenny List 31 Comments

Against the backdrop of a global respiratory virus pandemic, it’s likely that more than a few readers have been thinking about pulse oximeters. You may even have looked at one closely and seen that it’s little more than a device which shines light through your finger, and wondered how they work. It’s something [Giulio Pons] has done, and to show us how it’s done he’s created a working pulse oximeter of his own.

He started with an infra-red heartbeat sensor module, which is revealed as nothing more than an IR LED and a photodiode. Sampling the output from the photodiode allows measurement of heartbeat, but gives not clue as to oxygen saturation. The interesting part comes via the property of red light in that it’s transmission through flesh varies with oxygen saturation, so adding a red LED and alternately measuring from the IR and red illuminations allows a saturation figure to be derived.

Commercial pulse oximeters are pretty cheap, so many of us will no doubt simply order one from the usual sources and call it good. But it’s always interesting to know how any device works, and this project reveals something simpler than we might have expected. If pulse oximeters interest you, compare it with this one we featured a few years ago.

Aladdin Lamp Shoots Flames With A Snap Of Your Fingers

May 13, 2020 by Moritz v. Sivers 4 Comments

Despite their dangers, even Marie Kondo would not convince us to abandon flamethrower projects because they literally spark joy in us. To make this flame shooting Aladdin lamp [YeleLabs] just used a 3D printer and some basic electronics.

The lamp body consists of two 3D-printed halves held together by neodymium magnets. They house a 400 kV spark generator, a fuel pump plus tank, and a 18650 Li-ion battery. The fuel pump is actually a 3 V air pump but it can also pump liquids at low pressure. As fuel [YeleLabs] used rubbing alcohol that they mixed with boric acid to give the flame a greenish tint. The blue base at the bottom of the lamp houses the triggering mechanism which magically lights up the lamp when you snap your fingers. This is achieved by a KY-038 microphone module and KY-019 relay module connected to a Digispark ATTiny85 microcontroller. When the microphone signal is above a certain threshold the relay module will simultaneously switch on the spark generator and fuel pump for 150 ms.

Although they proclaim that the device is a hand sanitizer it is probably safer to stick to using soap. The project still goes on the list of cool flamethrower props right next to the flame shooting Jack-o-Lantern.

Video after the break.

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A Smart Bandage For Monitoring Chronic Wounds

May 12, 2020 by Orlando Hoilett 4 Comments

Here at Hackaday, we’re always enthralled by cool biohacks and sensor development that enable us to better study and analyze the human body. We often find ourselves perusing Google Scholar and PubMed to find the coolest projects even if it means going back in time a year or two. It was one of those scholarly excursions that brought us to this nifty smart bandage for monitoring wound healing by the engineers of FlexiLab at Purdue University. The device uses an omniphobic (hydrophobic and oleophobic) paper-based substrate coupled with an onboard impedance analyzer (AD5933), an electrochemical sensor (the same type of sensor in glucometers) for measuring uric acid and pH (LMP91000), and a 2.4 GHz antenna for wirelessly transmitting the data (nRF24L01). All this is programmed with an Arduino Nano. They even released their source code.

To detect uric acid, they used the enzyme uricase, which is very specific to uric acid and exhibits low cross-reactivity with other compounds. They drop cast uric acid onto a silver/silver chloride electrode printed on the omniphobic paper. Similarly, to detect pH, they drop cast a pH-responsive polymer called polyaniline emeraldine salt (PANI-ES) between two separate silver/silver chloride electrodes. All that was left was to attach the electrodes to the LMP91000, do a bit of programming, and there they were with their own electrochemical sensor. The impedance analyzer was a bit simpler to develop, simply attaching un-modified electrodes to the AD5933 and placing the electrodes on the wound.

The authors noted that the device uses a much simpler manufacturing process compared to smart bandages published by other academics, being compatible with large-scale manufacturing techniques such as roll-to-roll printing. Overcoming manufacturing hurdles is a critical step in getting your idea into the hands of consumers. Though they have a long way to go, FlexiLab appears to be on the right track. We’ll check back in every so often to see what they’re up to.

Until then, take a look at some other electric bandage projects on Hackaday or even make your own electrochemical sensor.

Portable MRI Machine Comes To The Patient

May 8, 2020 by Dan Maloney 41 Comments

To say that the process of installing a magnetic resonance imager in a hospital is a complex task is a serious understatement. Once the approval of regulators is obtained, a process that could take years, architects and engineers have to figure out where the massive machine can be installed. An MRI suite requires a sizable electrical service to be installed, reinforced floors to handle the massive weight of the magnet, and special shielding in the walls and ceiling. And once the millions have been spent and the whole thing is up and running, there are ongoing safety concerns when working around a gigantic magnet that can suck ferromagnetic objects into it at any time.

MRI studies can reveal details of diseases and injuries that no other imaging modality can match, which justifies the massive capital investments hospitals make to obtain them. But what if MRI scanners could be miniaturized? Is there something inherent in the technology that makes them so massive and so expensive that many institutions are priced out of the market? Or has technology advanced far enough that a truly portable MRI?

It turns out that yes, an inexpensive MRI scanner is not only possible, but can be made portable enough to wheel into a patient care room. It’s not without compromise, but such a device could make a huge impact on diagnostic medicine and extend MRI technologies into places far beyond the traditional hospital setting.

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The Vaccine Factory Inside You: RNA Vaccine Basics

May 4, 2020 by Dan Maloney 19 Comments

As the world pulls back from the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, it enters what will be perhaps a more challenging time: managing the long-term presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes the disease. In the roughly two-century history of modern vaccination practices, we’ve gotten pretty good at finding ways to protect ourselves from infectious diseases, and there’s little doubt that we’ll do the same for SARS-CoV-2. But developing a vaccine against any virus or bacterium takes time, and in a pandemic situation, time is exactly what’s at a premium.

In an effort to create an effective vaccine against this latest viral threat, scientists and physicians around the world have been taking a different approach to inoculation. Rather than stimulating the immune system in the usual way with a weakened sample of the virus, they’re trying to use the genetic material of the virus to stimulate an immune response. These RNA vaccines are a novel approach to a novel infection, and understanding how they work will be key to deciding whether they’ll be the right way to attack this pandemic.

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