The Hackaday Prize

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Analyzing And Controlling Hand Tremors

May 3, 2017 by 6 Comments

For the millions of people suffering from Parkinson’s and other causes of hand tremor, there is new hope in the form of [mohammedzeeshan77]’s entry into the Hackaday Prize: a glove that analyzes and controls the tremors.

The glove uses an accelerometer and a pair of flex sensors to determine the position of the hand as it oscillates. A Particle Photon crunches the raw data to come up with the frequency and amplitude of the tremors and uploads it to the cloud for retrieval and analysis by medical staff.

Hand tremors can vary in frequency and severity depending on the cause. Some are barely perceptible movements, and others are life-disrupting shakes. By analyzing the frequency and amplitude of these tremors, doctors can better understand a patient’s condition.

The best part of this glove is that it also provides immediate relief to the wearer by stabilizing the hand. A rapidly spinning super precision gyroscope counteracts the tremor oscillations as it tries to maintain its position. The last time we saw innovation like this, it came with a set of attachments.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Seizure Detection By EEG

May 2, 2017 by 13 Comments

For those that suffer them, seizures are a dangerous thing. Outside the neurological effects, there is always the possibility of injury from the surrounding environment as well – consider the dangers of having a seizure near a busy road, or even simply a glass table. Some detection methods exist for seizure sufferers, but they are primarily based on detecting the jerking motion of the patient. [akhil2001us] thinks it’s possible to do better – by measuring brainwaves to detect the onset of seizures.

The build is centered around the Neurosky Mindwave headset. This is an off-the-shelf product designed specifically for capturing EEG data. It outputs raw brainwave data which is key for doing proper analysis. The project then uses an Arduino Mega to tie everything together, along with some Sparkfun Bluetooth modules to talk to a cell phone to send an SMS for help in the event of a seizure.

The real difficulty in a project like this comes from developing an algorithm that can reliably detect seizures, as well as a unit robust enough to work in the real world. It’s no use if your headset is detecting a seizure in progress, but the help message is never sent because a wire fell out of your breadboard. It’s considerations like this, combined with the threat of litigation, behind why medical devices are so rigorously engineered and certified. For a proof of concept, however, such concerns are not as important.

We’ve seen Mindwave builds before – brainwave research is an exciting field!

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Hacker Calculus

May 1, 2017 by 42 Comments

Mathematics, as it is taught in schools, sometimes falls short in its mission to educate the pupils. This is the view of [Joan Horvath] and [Rich Cameron], particularly with respect to the teaching of calculus, which they feel has become a purely algebraic discipline that leaves many students in the cold when it comes to understanding the concepts behind it.

Their Hacker Calculus project aims to address this, by returning to [Isaac Newton]’s 1687 seminal work on the matter, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. They were struck by how much the Principia was a work of geometry rather than algebra, and they are seeking to return to [Newton]’s principles in a bid to make the subject more accessible to students left behind when it comes to derivatives and integrals. They intend to refine the geometric approach to create a series of practical items to explain the concepts, both through 3D printed items and through electronics.

We can see that this is an approach that has considerable merit, given that most Hackaday readers will have at some time or other sat through a maths lesson and come away wondering what on earth the teacher was talking about and having been baffled by further attempts to explain it through impenetrable maths-speak. If you were the kid who “got” calculus when the relationship between speed and acceleration – another thing we have [Newton] to thank for describing – was explained in your physics lessons, then you will probably understand.

The pair have some Hackaday Prize history, you may remember them from such previous entries as their 3D prints for the visually impaired project from last year.

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IuT ! IoT

May 1, 2017 by 48 Comments

Let’s build the Internet of USEFUL Things, not just the Internet of Things. IuT ! IoT

That’s what we’ll be doing over the next five weeks. The second challenge of the 2017 Hackaday Prize begins today. We’re looking for the best ideas we can find for useful connected devices. Twenty entries will recieve $1,000 and move on to the final round to vie for the top prizes ranging from $5,000 to $50,000.

There is no doubt that the future is connected. It has been our future since the advent of the telegraph, and we’re unarguably becoming more connected at a faster rate. The phone in your hand, pocket, or bag connects you to the bulk of human knowledge. But it doesn’t yet connect you to very many “things”. It won’t be that way for long.

Already we’ve seen cameras (security, baby monitor, and everything in between) appear as some of the earliest connected devices, and they’ve brought with them all of the unintended consequences of poorly secured computer gear connected to the wider Internet. At least remote cameras have a purpose; there have been more than enough product launches for things that don’t. Our go-to counter-example is the Internet-connected toaster which is the topic of our wonderful art from Joe Kim this morning. Who needs to toast remotely? Nobody.

Let’s Invent the IoT

Here is our chance to do it right. How can Internet of Things make life better? What things become more meaningful when added to a network and what does that look like? How do we continue to connect our world while safeguarding privacy and being mindful of security. Finding answers to these questions will lead you to Build Something that Matters.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: High Speed Sampling For The Raspberry Pi

April 30, 2017 by 8 Comments

The Raspberry Pi has become a firm favorite in our community for its array of GPIOs and other interfaces, as well as its affordable computing power. Unfortunately though despite those many pins, there is a glaring omission in its interfacing capabilities. It lacks an analogue-to-digital converter, so analog inputs have to rely on an expansion card either on those GPIOs or through the USB port.

Most people remain content with simple ADCs such as Microchip’s MCP3008, or perhaps a USB sound card for low frequency moving targets. But not [Kelu124], he’s set his sights on something much faster. The original Pi is reputed to be capable of handling a 10Msamples/s ADC, so he thinks its faster successors should be able to work much faster. To that end, he’s created an ADC pHAT which he thinks should be good for twice that figure.

The choice of silicon is a CA3306E, a 6-bit device that’s rated at 15Msamples/S. It’s something of a dated device as is shown by its DIP package, and a quick look through major suppliers shows it to be no longer available. Happily though, when you look at his GitHub repo it emerges that he’s also producing a board based on the ADC08200, so his software is targetable at other chips.

Whether or not you need your Pi to serve as video digitizer or high-speed instrument, it’s useful and interesting to take a look at a board like this one in action. We often don’t use the raw power of our single board computers, and this project proves that should we ever need to, we can.

If ADCs interest you, take a look at [Bil Herd]’s series on delta-sigma ADCs.

Thanks [Fustini] for the tip.

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Hackaday Prize: An Autonomous Beach Art Robot

April 29, 2017 by 28 Comments

Some people find it hard to look at a huge, flat expanse of floor or ground and not see a canvas. From the outfield grass of a baseball park to some poor farmer’s wheat field, trampling, trimming or painting patterns can present an irresistible temptation. But the larger the canvas the more challenging the composition will be, which is where this autonomous beach-combing art robot comes into play.

Very much still a work in progress, [pablo.odysseus]’ beach bot was built to take advantage of the kilometers-wide beaches left by the receding tides near his home. That immense canvas is begging to be groomed, and this bot is built for the task. The running gear itself is simple – an extruded aluminum chassis powered by wheelchair drives with added optical encoders and dragging a retractable rake  – but the bot is bristling with electronics dedicated to navigation.  A pair of Arduinos run the dual odometers, compass, and a GNSS receiver, as well as providing a smartphone interface for on-the-fly changes. The art is composed as a DXF file converted to latitude and longitude points and exported to Google Earth as a KML. That means the bot can just be brought to the beach and allowed to draw autonomously. An early test run is seen below the break; better “brushes” are in the works.

Watching the art unfold on a beach would be relaxing, like watching a zen garden being created. We’re looking forward to [pablo]’s progress on this one. Of course, art bots aren’t the only autonomous machines that big, wide beaches attract.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: A Double Action Keyboard

April 28, 2017 by 31 Comments

Mechanical keyboards are the in thing right now and building your own is at least two extra levels of nerd cred. This project, entered in the Hackaday Prize, is a DIY keyboard unlike you’ve ever seen. It is a fundamental shift in the ideas of how a computer keyboard can work. It’s a double action keyboard. Press a key lightly, and one character will show up on the screen. Press hard, and a different character will show up on the screen. You’ve never seen anything like this before.

[Jaakob] designed this keyboard so that each keycap would have two switches underneath. He did this by taking regular ‘ol Cherry MX switches and modifying them so the ‘plunger’ would stick out of the bottom of the switch when it was fully depressed. These Cherry switches were mounted to a piece of perfboard, and a small tact switch soldered underneath. It’s an idea similar to what’s found in touch-sensitive MIDI controllers or the other type of keyboard. The difference here is that instead of using two switches to sense how hard a key is being pressed, it maps to two different functions.

Once [Jaakob] figured out how to put two switches under one keycap, he wired up a matrix, attached a Teensy, and took a crack at the firmware. The build isn’t quite done yet, but this is one of the most innovative DIY keyboards we’ve seen in recent memory. There’s a lot of potential here, and this method of ganging two switches together still allows for the fantastic clack and great feel of a mechanical switch.

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