Hackaday Prize Entry: Ebers – Diabetes Care, Step By Step

September 29, 2017 by Lewin Day 1 Comment

Diabetes is a disease that, among other things, has significant effects on the feet due to a combination of neuropathy, vascular issues, and other factors. You may have seen special diabetes socks with features like non-elasticated cuffs for better circulation and a lack of seams to prevent the formation of blisters. Taking care of your feet is essential in diabetes to prevent injury and infection. Ebers is a project that seeks to help in just this area.

Ebers monitors plantar pressure, temperature, and humidity in the sole of the shoe. It then feeds this data back to a smartphone for analysis over Bluetooth. The brain of the project is an Arduino Pro Mini which is tasked with interfacing with the various sensors.

The project relies on 3D printed insoles which fit inside the shoe of the wearer. This is a particularly useful application of 3D printing, as it means the insole can be customised to fit the individual, rather than relying on a smaller selection of pre-sized forms. This has the additional benefit of allowing the insole to be designed to minimise pressure on the foot in the first place, further reducing the likelihood of injury and infection. The pressure sensing is actually built into the insole itself, and can measure pressure at several different areas of the foot.

Overall, it’s a project with huge potential health benefits for those with diabetes. We look forward to seeing where this project goes in future, and how it can bring improvements to the quality of life for people the world over.

Robotic Arms Controlled By Your….. Feet?

June 7, 2017 by James Hobson 12 Comments

The days of the third hand’s dominance of workshops the world over is soon coming to an end. For those moments when only a third hand is not enough, a fourth is there to save the day.

Dubbed MetaLimbs and developed by a team from the [Inami Hiyama Laboratory] at the University of Tokyo and the [Graduate School of Media Design] at Keio University, the device is designed to be worn while sitting — strapped to your back like a knapsack — but use while standing stationary is possible, if perhaps a little un-intuitive. Basic motion is controlled by the position of the leg — specifically, sensors attached to the foot and knee — and flexing one’s toes actuates the robotic hand’s fingers. There’s even some haptic feedback built-in to assist anyone who isn’t used to using their legs as arms.

The team touts the option of customizeable hands, though a soldering iron attachment may not be as precise as needed at this stage. Still, it would be nice to be able to chug your coffee without interrupting your work.

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Vote With Your Feet

November 12, 2016 by Bryan Cockfield 25 Comments

Gamifying life is silly, fun, and a great way to interact with those strangers who you pass everyday. Here’s one example that might just pop up along your next walk to work. It’s a way to take a very unscientific straw poll on any topic — you won’t even have to use your hands to cast a ballot.

A group called [Vote With Your Feet] has come up with a novel way of casting ballots. Simply walk down the sidewalk and through one of two doorways, each labeled with either side of a dichotomy. Each doorway is able to count the number of people that pass through it, so any issue imaginable can be polled. They already did vim vs emacs (59 to 27), and we’d like to see Keynes vs Hayek, or even Ovaltine vs Nesquik. Users can send the machine new issues for the masses to vote on, so the entertainment is quite literally limited only by your imagination.

The physical build is well documented. Since this is used outside, the choice of a flipdot display (of course always fun to play with) is perfect for this high-contrast in any level of light. Each doorway has a break-beam sensor which is monitored by the Raspberry Pi driving the overhead display (here’s code for it all if you want to dig in).

The point of this art installation like this is to get people to interact with their environment in a novel way, which this project has accomplished exceptionally well. In 3 days, they registered over 10,000 votes which are viewable on their website. If you have a project in mind that calls for data visualization you might want to keep this in your back pocket.

We have also seen other ways that doorways can count people outside of voting, if you’re looking for any inspiration yourself.

Super Simple Inch Worm Mechanism

August 10, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 21 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvplpWJ9CcI]

Sticklers for the definition of “robot” should simply avert your gaze for the opening title of the video. [Randofo] has posted this beautifully simple inch worm mechanism using only a ruler, some connectors, a switch, a servo, a comb, some batteries, and a couple Tupperware containers. It inches, as it was designed to do, quite well. We’re especially fond of the use of a comb as an easily modifiable switch activator.