Collaborate Disseminate
They say that sitting is the new smoking. They’re wrong — smoking is much, much worse, for you than sitting, and smoking only while standing or while jogging around the …read more Continue reading Presence-Detecting Cushion Keeps You from Sitting Your Life Away
There’s kind of a special joy in making instruments, no matter how simple or complex they are. Even if it’s a straight-up noisemaker, that’s noise you can be proud of. And besides, noise plus rhythm equals music.
Whenever you’re ready to have some next-level fun, try making controllers for your …read more
What prosthetic limbs can do these days is nothing short of miraculous, and can change the life of an amputee is so many ways. But no matter what advanced sensors and actuators are added to the prosthetic, it has to interface with the wearer’s body, and that can lead to …read more
Continue reading Flex PCBs Make Force-Mapping Pressure Sensor for Amputee
Hackers often find uses for pressure sensitive materials, detecting footfalls during walking or keypresses in a synthesizer being two examples. [Marco Reps] decided he’d make a hi-res, body-sized pressure sensitive mat mainly for computer-guided physiotherapy, though he wouldn’t rule out using it for gaming (twister anyone?). That meant making the equivalent of a body-sized matrix circuit of around 7000 sensors, as well as a circuit board with a multitude of shift registers. The result has a surprisingly good resolution, capable of making clearly distinguishable the heel, arch and front part of a foot.
His choice of pressure sensitive material was …read more
ALS robbed one of [C. Niggel]’s relative’s of the use of their upper body. This effectively imprisoned them in their house; ALS is bad stuff. Unfortunately too, the loss of upper body mobility meant that they couldn’t even use the computer to interact with people and the outside world. However, one day [C. Niggel] noted that the relative’s new electric wheelchair was foot controlled. Could this be adapted to a computer mouse?
He looked up commercial solutions and found them not only prohibitively expensive, but also fraught with proprietary drivers and all sorts of bad design nonsense. With all of …read more
Continue reading Hackaday Prize Entry: $50 Foot Controlled Mouse
