Category Archives: assistive technology

Hackaday Prize Entry: OrthoSense, a Smart Knee Brace for Physical Therapy

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If you have knee surgery, you can probably count on some physical therapy to go with it. But one thing you might not be able to count on is getting enough attention from your therapist. This was the case with [Vignesh]’s mother, who suffers from osteoarthritis (OA). Her physiotherapist kept a busy schedule and couldn’t see her very often, leaving her to wonder at her rehabilitation progress.

[Vignesh] already had a longstanding interest in bio-engineering and wearables. His mother’s experience led him down a rabbit hole of research about the particulars of OA rehabilitation. He found that less than 35% …read more

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A Slew Of NYC Meetups With Tindie And Hackaday This Week

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This is a busy, busy week for Tindie and Hackaday. We’re going to New York, and we have a ton of events planned.

First up is the monthly Hackaday meetup. This time, we’re teaming up with Kickstarter for a pre-Maker Faire Meetup. We’ll be hosting this at Kickstarter’s HQ, and already we have an impressive line of speakers set up to talk about Assistive Technology. These speakers include:

  • Anita Perr and R. Luke Dubois from the NYU Ability Project
  • Andrew Chepaitis from ELIA Life Technology

Also on deck for the for the Hackaday x Kickstarter meetup are live demos from …read more

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Touch Sensitive Power Supplies For EL Panels

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[fool]’s entry in the Hackaday Prize competition is a modular and configurable lighting system the purpose of which is to assist seniors and others with limited mobility navigate safely at home. For [fool], this means the quiet steady hum of electroluminescent panels and wire. EL stuff is notoriously tricky to power, as it only operates on AC. The MoonLITE project is the answer to the problem of an easy to use EL power supply. The goal is to create a 5 watt, quiet, wearable EL power supply that outputs 100V at 100Hz.

One of the reasons why [fool] is interested …read more

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Staircane, a Walker That Takes the Stairs

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[Jim]’s aunt has lived in the same house for the last 50 years. She loves it there, and she wants to stay as long as possible. There’s a big problem, though. The house has several staircases, and they are all beginning to disagree with her. Enter Staircane, [Jim]’s elegant solution that adds extendable legs to any standard walker.

Most of the time, walkers serve their purpose quite well. But once you encounter uneven ground or a staircase, they show their limitations. The idea behind Staircane is a simple one: quickly extend the back or front legs of a walker depending …read more

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Hackaday’s Assistive Technology Challenge Begins Now

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This morning marks a new challenge in the Hackaday Prize: we want to see what you can do with Assistive Technology. Twenty entries will win $1000 each, becoming part of the final round for a chance at the top prizes ranging from $5,000 to $50,000.

Assistive Technology means things that help people by improving their quality of life. This can take so many forms but broadly speaking this could make aging easier, turn disabilities into abilities, or enhance the access and delivery of health care.

We’ve seen great things in this area from the Hackaday community. The Grand Prize for …read more

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Beyond The Prize: Eye Driving Wheelchairs

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For this year’s Hackaday Prize, we opened up five challenges for hackers and tinkerers to create the greatest hardware in five categories. We asked citizen scientists to build something to expand the frontiers of knowledge. We asked automation experts to build something more useful than the Internet of chocolate chip cookies. In the Assistive Technologies portion of the prize, we asked our community of engineers to build something that would open the world up to all of us.

While this year’s Assistive Technologies challenge brought out some great projects, there is one project from last year that must be mentioned. …read more

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Calling All Procrastinators

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We have your number… you’re one who likes to while away the daylight hours, then make a mad effort throughout the night to finish everything before the sun again rises. In fact, that describes a lot of us Hackaday writers.

Put those well-honed cramming skills to good use this weekend, because Monday morning is the deadline to enter the 2016 Hackaday Prize. The current challenge is to show us your Assistive Technology. Prototyping some hardware to make life a little bit better for people dealing with a disability, to help those who are aging in place, to provide more widespread …read more

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My Take on Assistive Tech for the Hackaday Prize

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We’re in the last few weeks for entries in the 2016 Hackaday Prize — specifically the challenge is to show off your take on assisstive technology. This is a hugely broad category and I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I’m sure there’s a ton of low-hanging fruit that’s not obvious to everyone. This would be a great time to hit up the comments below and leave your “hey, I always thought someone should make…” ideas. I’m looking forward to reading them and it might just inspire someone to spend the next couple weeks hammering out a prototype to …read more

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A Better Way to Measure Your Impact on the World

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Close your eyes and think of an electric wheelchair. What do you see? Is it sleek, futuristic, and elegant… worthy of the moniker: iChair? No, no it is not. It’s a boxy tank-like thing with grey knobbed wheels that is powered with lead-acid batteries. Why is that?

Obviously there are alternatives. Just yesterday I came across UPnRIDE (that name is sore on the eyes but speak it aloud and you’ll get it). It’s an electric wheelchair that converts into a standing position. And it looks comparatively sleek and modern. And it’s not the first time I’ve seen the idea before. …read more

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Assistive Technology Users Free Upgrade Still Available for Windows 10

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Microsoft has continued to offer the free Windows 10 upgrade to customers who use Assistive Technologies even though the consumer version of the offer expired on 29 July of this year.

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