Measuring Meditation With A Heart Rate

March 20, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 15 Comments

meditation

We’ve seen our fair share of builds over the years that attempt to peer inside a user’s head and divine their state of mind. Whether the goal is to induce lucid dreaming or just reduce anxiety, we’re always impressed with how many ways you can detect moods with physiological measurements. [Kirk] has been measuring his own physiology for months, and found the biggest change during meditation is the variability in his heart rate. Using that algorithm, he made an orb that changes colors when he’s meditating.

The hardware for the build uses a Bluetooth LE heart rate monitor connected to a smart phone communicating with an Electric Imp. After processing the heart rate data, the Imp triggers an RGB LED strip controlled with an Arduino. The result is a plastic orb that glows whenever the user is displaying some sort of mindfulness, cross referenced with algorithm generated from mindlessly browsing the Internet.

How To Make A Vaporizer For Smoking Medical Marijuana

February 13, 2013 by Caleb Kraft 294 Comments

Here’s a home made vaporizer we can really get behind.

Lets just take a second to be completely honest here. There’s no point in suggesting that this is possibly for smoking tobacco. Medical marijuana is legal (well, not federally), in several states, and we’re sure there are hackers there that would really enjoy making something of their own instead of just buying something.

We’ve covered a few below and they always seemed to have something in common. They use soldering irons for heat. Inevitably someone points out what a bad idea this is.

Continue reading “How To Make A Vaporizer For Smoking Medical Marijuana” →

Help Hackaday Build A Custom Gaming Controller For A Good Cause

February 12, 2013 by Caleb Kraft 46 Comments

We are going to make a custom gaming controller for a child with Muscular Dystrophy. His name is Thomas and he loves minecraft. This is a project that I have been wanting to do for years. I’m just beginning now, and you can join in on the project and offer your thoughts in our forums. We’re starting with Thomas, but ultimately, we’d like to develop a collection of fairly simple to construct open source game controllers.

For people who have a physical disability, gaming can have a profound psychological impact. Sometimes it is the only place where they can go and be on a level playing ground with their peers. Often custom gaming controllers are quite expensive, especially when you start to leave the standard xbox/playstation form factor.

Continue reading “Help Hackaday Build A Custom Gaming Controller For A Good Cause” →

3D Printed Prosthetic Hand Helps Out For About $150

February 8, 2013 by Mike Szczys 26 Comments

3d-printed-prosthetic-hand-on-thingiverse

We know that there are already 3D printed hips and knees in use in the medical field, but it takes a story like this one to really bring home the idea of how this technology changes lives. 5-year-old [Liam] is missing parts of his right hand, and this open-source prosthetic hand has given him a jolt of increased function. The video clip after the break shows him on the third day with the device. He’s practicing picking up coins from a stack using the hand. Just $150 in parts, combined with the hard work and good nature of the developers, made this possible.

The design is available on Thingiverse. In addition to the 3D printed parts the prosthesis uses off-the-shelf hardware store items like bungee cord and fasteners. The tips of each finger and the thumb are given some flex and grip by covering each with a rubber thimble.

We love seeing this life-changing technology wielded by basement and garage hackers. Another great example is this scratch-built leg from last May.

Continue reading “3D Printed Prosthetic Hand Helps Out For About $150” →

Adaptive Technology Used To Fly An IR Helicopter

February 4, 2013 by Mike Szczys 1 Comment

adaptive-tech-controlled-helicopter

This gentleman is using electrical impulses from his neck muscles to fly a toy helicopter around the room. The project is a demonstration of the AsTeRICS project which seeks to reduce the complexity of adapting the set of skills a disabled person can use to do a wide range of functions. In this case, controlling the helicopter could easily be switched to other tasks without changing the user interface hardware.

One of the plugins for the AsTeRICS project uses the OpenEEG library. This reads the signals coming from a pair of electrodes on top of each shoulder. In the video after the break you can see that as he flexes these muscles the changes in signal are mapped to the altitude of the helicopter. This is just one example of a wide range of inputs that include things like building a webcam-based mouse or using facial recognition.

The toy itself is being driven by an Arduino sending IR commands. We’ve seen quite a few project where the helicopter communications protocols are laid bare.

Continue reading “Adaptive Technology Used To Fly An IR Helicopter” →

Build A Bioprinter From Very Old Inkjet Cartridges

January 25, 2013 by Mike Szczys 34 Comments

This column of messages was printed with Escherichia coli. That’s the bacteria better known as E. coli which can cause so many problems if it makes its way into our food. But the relative size and the fact that this strain was engineered to glow in the dark makes it a perfect candidate for Bio Printing. We find it even more interesting that it was printed using hacked inkjet and computer parts.

There are legitimate uses for this type of technology. But this project is aimed more at getting the word out about the method and how easy it can be. For us, it’s the close look at modern inkjet print heads that was the most interesting. It turns out that common cartridges have an overly high-resolution for this to work well. In order to get so many dots in such a small area the nozzle openings end up being too small for most biological material to fit through. There is also an issue with a filter built into the silicone technology inside.

The solution was to use the InkShield to drive cartridges from very old printers. This lets the team command the cartridge with an Arduino, making it dead simple to tweak the way the material is deposited. They mounted the cartridge holder (using decades-old technology in the form of HP Deskjet 500 cartridges) on the sled of an optical drive and went from there.

Take a glance at the printer in action in the clip after the break.

Continue reading “Build A Bioprinter From Very Old Inkjet Cartridges” →

Hot Air Rework Doubles As An Herbal Bag Vaporizer

January 24, 2013 by Mike Szczys 119 Comments

hot-air-rework-bag-vaporizer

This hot air rework station is being used for more than just soldering surface mount components. Since it has settings for temperature and airflow [BrokeHippieTech] figured it would work as a bag vaporizer. In the video after the break they show off the custom parts and then take it though and herbal blend bag fill.

The hot air station comes with several different tips. The smallest one was used to mount a vaporizer bowl using high-temperature JB Weld. On the output side of the bowl a metal stem was also affixed to interface with the mouthpiece of a vaporizer bag. The heat from the rework station brings the herbs just below the combustion point, releasing the active ingredients without including the harmful byproducts associated with smoking.

We’re putting this one under medical hacks because we hope it’s being used responsibly and legally. As with the last vaporizer build we looked at, we have concerns about what else the apparatus may be putting into the collected gases.

Continue reading “Hot Air Rework Doubles As An Herbal Bag Vaporizer” →