A Wearable That Jives To The Beat Of Your Heart

July 9, 2020 by Orlando Hoilett No comments

We’re always searching for the coolest biohacking projects all over the web, so imagine our excitement when we ran across [marcvila333’s] wearable biometric monitor on Instructables. This was a combined effort between [Marc Vila], [Guillermo Stauffacher], and [Pau Carcellé] as they were wrapping up the semester at their university. Their goal was to develop an integrated device that could modulate the wearer’s heart, and subsequently their mood and stress levels, using music.

Their device includes an LCD screen for user feedback, buttons for user input, an MP3 module, and a heart rate sensor module. The user can measure their heart rate and use the buttons to select the type of music they desire based on whether they would like to decrease or increase their heart rate. The science behind this phenomenon is still unknown, but the general sense is that different music can trigger different chemical signals in your brain, subsequently affecting your mood and other subtle physiological effects. I guess you can say that we tend to jive to the beat of our music.

It would be really cool to see their device automatically change the song to either lower or raise the user’s heart rate, making them calmer or more engaged. Maybe connect it to your tv? Currently, the user has to manually adjust the music, which might be a bit more inconvenient and could possibly lead to the placebo effect.

Either way; Cool project, team. Thanks for sharing!

This Iron Man Suit Is A Hacker’s Dream Come True

July 4, 2020 by Orlando Hoilett 9 Comments

[Techmaster], like probably a lot of us, was hugely inspired by the engineering wonder that is the Iron Man suit. So, like any good maker, he decided to build his own. [Techmaster’s] social media pages are filled with promotional videos that are sure to get you excited for your next Comic-Con (when you can go in-person of course).

It’s difficult to summarize all the work [Techmaster] has put into his suit in a single post, so we’ll let his social media pages do the talking. From the knuckle launcher to the repulsor and the beloved Arc rector, [Techmaster] is really putting together an impressive set. Now, we’ve seen our fair share of Iron Man-inspired projects here on Hackaday, but [Techmaster’s] designs might be the closest attempt to a full suit with the projectiles to match.

[Techmaster’s] goal is to develop the most realistic Iron Man suit ever, well..other than the original we suppose. Given the dynamic nature of his development process, there aren’t any DIY instructions for the rest of us to follow as of yet (though he does host live streams), so you’ll have to piece together design ideas from his promotional videos.

[Techmaster] might be living the dream a lot of us wish were our realities and we certainly can’t wait to see an official version 1 release. Feel free to support his development if you feel so inclined.

DIY Filtered Positive Pressure Suit Shows Fine Workmanship

July 3, 2020 by Donald Papp 19 Comments

[Andrew]’s Air filtering unit & positive pressure supply might look like something off the set of Ghostbusters, but it’s an experiment in making a makeshift (but feasible) positive pressure suit. The idea is to provide an excess of filtered air to what is essentially an inflatable soft helmet. The wearer can breathe filtered air while the positive pressure means nothing else gets in. It’s definitely an involved build that uses some specific hardware he had on hand, but the workmanship is great and shows some thoughtful design elements.

The unit has three stacked filters that can be easily swapped. The first stage is medical mask material, intended to catch most large particles, which is supported by a honeycomb frame. The next filter is an off-the-shelf HEPA filter sealed with a gasket; these are available in a wide variety of sizes and shapes so [Andrew] selected one that was a good fit. The third and final stage is an activated carbon filter that, like the first stage, is supported by a honeycomb frame. The idea is that air that makes it through all three filters is safe (or at least safer) to breathe. There isn’t any need for the helmet part to be leakproof, because the positive pressure relative to the environment means nothing gets in.

Air is sucked through the filters and moved to the helmet by an HP BLc7000 server fan unit, which he had on hand but are also readily available on eBay. These fan units are capable of shoveling a surprising amount of air, if one doesn’t mind a surprising amount of noise in the process, so while stacked filter stages certainly impede airflow, the fan unit handles it easily. The BLc7000 isn’t a simple DC motor and requires a driver, so for reference [Andrew] has a short YouTube video of how the fan works and acts.

All the 3D models and design files are available online should anyone wish to take a closer look. It’s certainly a neat experiment in making a filtered positive pressure supply and head cover with materials that are fairly common. If [Andrew] ever wants to move to a whole-body suit, maybe repurpose an old Halloween costume into a serviceable positive pressure suit.

An Off-The-Grid Instant Messaging Plattform

July 2, 2020 by Moritz v. Sivers 19 Comments

Having an open-source communication device that is independent of any network and works without fees sounds like a hacker’s dream come true. Well, this is exactly what [bobricius]’ is aiming at with his Armawatch and Armachat devices.

Recently, [bobricius] built a LoRa based instant messaging device named Armachat. The gadget is controlled by a SAMD21 MCU with native USB and includes a QWERTY keyboard and an LCD display. Communication is based on an RFM95 LoRa transceiver which can reach a range of up to 2 km under ideal conditions. [bobricius] is a wiz when it comes to PCB design and one thing that makes his projects look so good is how he often uses PCBs as enclosures.

Armachat came in two form factors a large desktop and a smaller pocket version. The new Armawatch is another downsized version that perfectly fits on your arm by using a smaller display and keyboard. [bobricius] also did a lot of work on the firmware which now features a message delivery confirmation and the possibility to automatically resend undelivered messages. Future improvements will include message encryption, a store-and-forward function, and GPS position parsing. [bobricius] is also working on completing his portfolio of communicators with a credit-card-sized version.

LoRa is the go-to technology for off-the-grid communication devices and there are already other ongoing projects for using it to construct a mesh network.

Wearable Device For Preventing SUDEP (Sudden Unexpected Death In Epilepsy)

June 22, 2020 by Orlando Hoilett 13 Comments

Epilepsy is a neurological disorder characterized by the occurrence of seizures. Epilepsy can often prevent patients from living a normal life since it’s nearly impossible to predict when a seizure will occur. The unpredictability of the seizures makes performing tasks such as driving extremely dangerous. One of the challenges in treating epilepsy is the condition is still not very well understood.

Neurava, a recent startup company from Purdue University, aims to change this fact. Neurava is developing a neck wearable that “records key biological signals related to epilepsy.” None of the press releases we’ve found so far elaborate on what those biological signals are. Though we have some guesses of our own, we’ll leave it to the Hackaday community to speculate for the time being. One of the major hurdles in using biological signals to treat conditions like epilepsy both lies in the accuracy of the measurement itself in addition to how well the measurement correlates to the underlying condition. From the looks of it, Neurava has been working on this technology for a long time and are certainly more aware of these challenges than we are.

Neurava’s wearable includes a few other functionalities we’ve come to expect in this era of smart devices such as wireless data transmission to both the physician and patient, physician dashboard to monitor the patient’s progress over extended periods of time, and in-time alerts in the event a seizure is detected.

Neurava appears to have garnered a bit of publicity in these last few months and are currently securing seed money to help advance their technology. We’ll check in every so often to see how they’re doing.

Surviving The Pandemic As A Hacker: Peering Behind The Mask

June 3, 2020 by Jenny List 30 Comments

We’re now several months into the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with most parts of the world falling somewhere on the lockdown/social distancing/opening up path.

It’s fair to say now that while the medical emergency has not passed, the level of knowledge about it has changed significantly. When communities were fighting to slow the initial spead, the focus was on solving the problem of medical protection gear and other equipment shortages at all costs with some interesting yet possibly hazardous solutions. Now the focus has moved towards protecting the general public when they do need to venture out, and as society learns to get life moving again with safety measures in place.

So, we all need masks of some sort. What type to do you need? Is one type better than another? And how do we all get them when everyone suddenly needs what was once a somewhat niche item?

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Arduband Gives Your Eyes A Hand

May 24, 2020 by Kristina Panos 14 Comments

Let’s face it, we probably all sit at our computers for way too long without getting up. Yes, there’s work to be done, games to be played, and the internet abounds with people who are wrong and must be down-voted and/or corrected. We totally get and respect all that. However, if you want to maintain your middle- and long-range vision, you should really get up regularly and gaze out the window for a bit.

In fact, the Arduband does you one better. Its Arduino Nano and accelerometer check your position every ten minutes. If you haven’t changed your Z by the third check, then it’s time for a break. The combination of an RGB LED, buzzer, and vibrating disc motor working together should be enough to pull you out of any computerized stupor, and they won’t give up and go back to sleep until you have stood up and remained upright for one minute.

We like that [ardutronics123] spun up a board and made it small enough to be wrist-mounted using a watch strap. It would work just as well worn around your neck, and would probably even fit in your pocket. Blink a few times before you check out the build video after the break.

Arduband would be great on the go, but who does that anymore? If you spend every day at the same desk, you could point a time-of-flight sensor at your chair and start a timer.

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