Blood Pressure Monitor For Under $1

June 20, 2023 by Bryan Cockfield 22 Comments

Medical equipment is not generally known for being inexpensive, with various imaging systems usually weighing in at over a million dollars, and even relatively simpler pieces of technology like digital thermometers, stethoscopes, and pulse oximeters coming in somewhere around $50. As the general pace of technological improvement continues on we expect marginal decreases in costs, but every now and then a revolutionary piece of technology will drop the cost of something like a blood pressure monitor by over an order of magnitude.

Typically a blood pressure monitor involves a cuff that pressurizes against a patient’s arm, and measures the physical pressure of the blood as the heart forces blood through the area restricted by the cuff. But there are some ways to measure blood pressure by proxy, instead of directly. This device, a small piece of plastic with a cost of less than a dollar, attaches to a smartphone near the camera sensor and flashlight. By pressing a finger onto the device, the smartphone uses the flashlight and the camera in tandem to measure subtle changes in the skin, which can be processed in an app to approximate blood pressure.

The developers of this technology note that it’s not a one-to-one substitute for a traditional blood pressure monitor, but it is extremely helpful for those who might not be able to afford a normal monitor and who might otherwise go undiagnosed for high blood pressure. Almost half of adults in the US alone have issues relating to blood pressure, so just getting information at all is the hurdle this device is attempting to overcome. And, we’ll count it as a win any time medical technology becomes more accessible, more inexpensive, or more open-source.

Hacking Headaches: Keeping A Neurostimulator Working

June 13, 2023 by Dan Maloney 11 Comments

We’ve heard a ton of stories over the years about abandoned technology — useful widgets, often cloud-based, that attracted an early and enthusiastic following, only to have the company behind the tech go bankrupt or decide to end operations for business reasons, which effectively bricks hundreds or perhaps millions of otherwise still-usable devices. Now imagine that happening to your brain.

[Markus Möllmann-Bohle] doesn’t have to imagine it, because he’s living it. [Markus] suffers from chronic cluster headaches, an often debilitating condition that leaves a person with intractable pain. Having lived with these headaches since 1987, and treating them with medications with varying degrees of success, [Markus] was finally delivered from his personal hell by a sphenopalatine ganglion (SPG) neuromodulator. The device consists of an unpowered stimulator implanted under the cheekbone that’s wired into the SPG, a bundle of nerves that supply the sinuses, nasal mucosa, tear glands, and many other structures in the face.

To reverse a cluster headache, [Markus] applies an external transmitter to the side of his face, which powers the implant and directs it to stimulate the SPG with low-frequency impulses, which interferes with a reflex loop that causes the symptoms associated with a cluster headache. [Markus] has been using the implant for years, but now its manufacturer has rolled up operations, leaving him with a transmitter in need of maintenance and the possibility of facing his debilitating headaches once again.

The video below shows [Markus]’s workaround, which essentially amounts to opening up the device and swapping in a new LiPo battery pack. [Markus], an electrical engineer by training, admits it’s not exactly a major hack, but it’s keeping him going for now. But he’s clearly worried because eventually, something will happen to that transmitter that’s beyond his skills to repair.

There’s cause for hope, though, as the intellectual property of the original implant company has been purchased by an outfit called Realeve, with the intention to continue support. That would be a lifesaver for [Markus] and everyone relying on this technology to live a normal life, so here’s hoping there’s no need for future hacking heroics. But as the video below details, there is a lot of neurotechnology out there, and the potential for having that bricked by a corporate decision has to be terrifying to the people who depend on them. Continue reading “Hacking Headaches: Keeping A Neurostimulator Working” →

Spaying Cats In One Shot

June 12, 2023 by Navarre Bartz 61 Comments

Feral cats live a rough life, and programs like Trap, Neuter, Release (TNR) attempt to keep their populations from exploding in a humane way. Researchers in Massachusetts have found a non-surgical way to spay cats that will help these efforts.

A single dose of anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) gene therapy suppresses ovarian follicle formation, essentially turning off the ovulation cycle. After following the test cats for two years, none had kittens, unlike the cats in the control group. Other major hormones like estrogen were unaffected in the cats and they didn’t exhibit any negative side effects. The researchers said it will be some time before the treatment can be widely deployed, but it offers hope for helping our internet overlords and the environs they ~~terrorize~~ inhabit.

For those of you doing TNR work, you might want to try this trap alert system to let you know you’ve caught a cat for spaying or neutering. If you’d rather use a cat treat dispenser to motivate your code monkeys, then check out this hack.

Hackaday Prize 2023: Bluetooth Spell To Speak

June 6, 2023 by Matthew Carlson 1 Comment

Have you ever known what you wanted to say but couldn’t figure out exactly how to say it? For some individuals, that’s all the time. The gap between intention and action can be a massive chasm. [Pedro Martin] is trying to help bridge that gap with a Bluetooth RPM letterboard.

[Soma Mukhopadhyay] developed Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) for teachers to work with students with autism. Gentle physical cues can help individuals complete motor movements, which can be used as a communication mechanism by pointing to a letterboard. Students can eventually move onto an tablet, but some students see the light as sensory noise or might associate it with playtime.

[Pedro] hopes that his letterboard will be able to provide tactile feedback for each letter to strengthen the connection the teacher is trying to establish. The letter board is a 22 by 14 grid (308 total) of touch electrodes connected to three MPR121 12-channel capacitive touch sensors connected to an ESP32 via I2C. Additionally, 60 LEDS controlled by two shift registers are interspaced between the touch electrodes. As only one LED will be on at a given time, [Pedro] can use the shift registers in a row/column setup since the current draw should be small. A piezo buzzer serves as additional feedback for the student. The ESP32 emulates a Bluetooth keyboard, so the teacher doesn’t have to keep track of what the student is spelling and can focus on RPM.

[Pedro] encountered the usual slew of debugging problems, such as ground bouncing, captive noise, and Bluetooth wonkiness. The code, KiCad, and STL files are on the Hackaday.io project page. If you want more accessibility-focused keyboards, look at the RP2040-based Intellikeys we saw recently.

Continue reading “Hackaday Prize 2023: Bluetooth Spell To Speak” →

Hackaday Prize 2023: LASK4 Watches Those Finger Wiggles

June 2, 2023 by Matthew Carlson No comments

What do you get when you combine an ESP32-S2, a machine-learning model, some Hall effect sensors, and a grip exercise toy? [Turfptax] did just that and created LASK4. The four springs push down pistons with tiny magnets on them. Hall effect sensors determine the piston’s position, and since the springs are linear, the ESP32 can also estimate the force being applied on a given finger. This data is then streamed to a nearby computer over TCP. A small OLED screen shows the status, and a tidy 3D printed case creates a comfortable package.

So other than an excellent musical instrument, what is this good for? First, it creates well-labeled training data when combined with what is collected by the muscle sensor band we discussed previously. The muscle band measures various pressure sensors radially around the forearm. With just a few minutes of training data, the system can accurately predict finger movement using the random forest regression model.

What would you use it for? It’s considered a somatosensory device, so it can be used for physical therapy when undergoing hand rehabilitation, as it provides feedback during sessions. Or it could be used to train a controller efficiently.

It’s an exciting project on GitHub under an OpenCERN hardware license. The code is in MicroPython, and the PCB and STL files are included. We’re looking forward to seeing what else comes from the project. After the break, there’s a progress update video.

Continue reading “Hackaday Prize 2023: LASK4 Watches Those Finger Wiggles” →

AI Creates Killer Drug

May 28, 2023 by Al Williams 60 Comments

Researchers in Canada and the United States have used deep learning to derive an antibiotic that can attack a resistant microbe, acinetobacter baumannii, which can infect wounds and cause pneumonia. According to the BBC, a paper in Nature Chemical Biology describes how the researchers used training data that measured known drugs’ action on the tough bacteria. The learning algorithm then projected the effect of 6,680 compounds with no data on their effectiveness against the germ.

In an hour and a half, the program reduced the list to 240 promising candidates. Testing in the lab found that nine of these were effective and that one, now called abaucin, was extremely potent. While doing lab tests on 240 compounds sounds like a lot of work, it is better than testing nearly 6,700.

Interestingly, the new antibiotic seems only to be effective against the target microbe, which is a plus. It isn’t available for people yet and may not be for some time — drug testing being what it is. However, this is still a great example of how machine learning can augment human brainpower, letting scientists and others focus on what’s really important.

WHO identified acinetobacter baumannii as one of the major superbugs threatening the world, so a weapon against it would be very welcome. You can hope that this technique will drastically cut the time involved in developing new drugs. It also makes you wonder if there are other fields where AI techniques could cull out alternatives quickly, allowing humans to focus on the more promising candidates.

Want to catch up on machine learning algorithms? Google can help. Or dive into an even longer course.

New Drug Has Potential As Dirty Bomb Antidote

May 25, 2023 by Dan Maloney 39 Comments

It perhaps goes without saying that one nuclear bomb can really ruin your day. The same is true for non-nuclear dirty bombs, which just use conventional explosives to disperse radioactive material over a wide area. Either way, the debris scattered by any type of radiation weapon has the potential to result in thousands or perhaps millions of injuries, for which modern medicine offers little in the way of relief.

HOPO 14-1, aka 3,4,3-Li(1,2-HOPO). The four hydroxypyridinone groups do the work of coordinating radioactive ions and making them soluble so they can be eliminated in urine.

But maybe not for long. A Phase 1 clinical trial is currently underway to see if an oral drug is able to scour radioactive elements from the human body. The investigational compound is called HOPO 14-1, a chelating agent that has a high affinity for metals in the actinide series, which includes plutonium, uranium, thorium, and ~~cerium~~ curium. Chelating agents, which are molecules that contain a multitude of electron donor sites, are able to bind to positively charged metal ions and make the soluble in aqueous solutions. Chelators are important in food and pharmaceutical processing — read the ingredients list on just about anything from a can of soda to a bottle of shampoo and you’re likely to see EDTA, or ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, which binds to any metal ions that make it into the product, particularly iron ions that come from the stainless steel plumbing used in processing equipment.

The compound under evaluation, HOPO 14-1, is a powerful chelator of metal ions. Its structure is inspired by natural chelators produced by bacteria and fungi, called siderophores, which help the microorganisms accumulate iron. Its mechanism of action is to sequester the radioactive ions and make them soluble enough to be passed out of the body in the urine, rather than to have the radioactive elements carried around the body and incorporated into the bones and other tissues where they can cause radiation damage for years.

HOPO 14-1 has a number of potential benefits over the current frontline chelator for plutonium and uranium toxicity, DTPA or diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid. Where DTPA needs to be injected intravenously to be effective, HOPO 14-1 can be made into a pill, making stockpiling and administering the drug easier. If, of course, it passes Phase 1 safety trials and survives later trials to determine efficacy.