Category Archives: Uncategorized

Cycling Safety Jacket

Cycling is dangerous.  As a cyclist, it is difficult to command attention from drivers, and drivers often have a difficult time predicting what move cyclists are about to make. Hand signals are difficult to execute, and difficult for drivers to understand.

Our project looks to solve these issues by creating a jacket to be worn for cycling, that includes a brake-light and turn-signals that the wearer can operate quickly and easily to make drivers aware of their presence and future actions.

This project will be challenging from both a design and technical standpoint, but fortunately we have skill sets that complement each other. We believe the most challenging aspects to designing an interface that is lightweight and comfortable, and also easy to operate when on the go.

– Andrew & Emma

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Pre-Work Project – Victor

Inputs : Switch, button

Outputs: four LEDs, RGB LED.

In this project, the user can turn on/off the device using the switch, and when he press the button the LED’s start to blink faster, until it reaches a limit speed, when it comes back to the normal speed. The RGB LED changes its color all the time the regular LED “reaches” it.

Assignment 4

My idea of a new wearable technology would be to have a bracelet or some other similar accessory that would be able to detect illness before it happened. You could simply breathe your germs all over the device in order for it to pick up dangerous germs. As it detected the beginning of the cold, flu, etc, it would alert the wearer and send a health recommendation or prescription (if needed) to the wearer’s email. Ideally it would be able to detect the beginning stages of more serious illnesses- cancer, diabetes, etc. so that the wearer could take action immediately.
The detection of more serious illnesses would be a challenge…any illness that requires drawn blood could become a problem. Perhaps it could act similar to a diabetes blood monitoring system?

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Shoes for the Blind

The idea for my project is to create shoes for the blind that have an array of proximity sensors that can detect obstacles in front of them. The sensors would connect to vibrating pads in the wearers shoes. When obstacles appear, but pads would give the wearer a general sense of what lies in front of them. Challenges would include calibrating the proximity sensors and vibrators to actually make the device useful, as well as making a product slim and durable enough that it could be worn daily.

Assignment 4 – Fit band

My idea is of a Security fit band. It will be a small device connect via Bluetooth to a smartphone app.  The device will have a little button, when the button is pressed, the fit band will send a signal to the smartphone , sending  a e-mail/text message with the user location to a pre-registered list of people informing that the user is in some kind of dangerous situation.

The challenges that we might face in this project would be:

  • Battery of the fit band (need to be small enough and all the time connect to the phone via Bluetooth)
  • Develop a mobile application and deal with apple restrictions ( After some research I discover that you can’t send a e-mail without user authorization using apple API, The developers will have to figure out a way around it).

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Head Mounted Accelerometric Mouse Device (Assignment 4)

This would be a device for those who are physically paralyzed from the neck down or do not have motor functions in the arms and wrist.  Essentially, this would be a hat that can sense tilt of a person’s head using an accelerometer and send commands to a computer via USB to control a cursor similar to a joystick.   To click, the user bites down on a force sensor located in the person’s mouth.  The accommodating circuitry would be sewn to a hat of the user’s choice.

Some challenges one may encounter when pursuing this project include the accuracy of movements, calibration, and sensitivity to small head movements.

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Class Today (10/2/14)

We will start class today the lecture below:

Laura Anderson Barbata Lecture
Thursday, October 2, 4:30pm
2235 Nancy Nicholas Hall
School of Human Ecology
1300 Linden Drive

The lecture for Hany Farid has been cancelled today so we meet back up in the classroom after the lecture.

This Mobile Dialysis Machine Will Clean Your Blood on the Go

http://gizmodo.com/this-mobile-dialysis-machine-will-clean-your-blood-on-t-1638758181

This article is about the invention of a wearable dialysis machine for individuals who suffer from kidney disease. I found this article interesting because while it seems a lot of wearable technology is used to make life easier in fairly superficial ways, this technology uses wearable computing for medical purposes. While it is hard for me to assess the success of this project, it will hopefully give patients who suffer from kidney disease a lot more mobility and freedom.