Brad Searle is an incredible parent, advocate, and maker. He helps administrate the Reaching for the Stars foundation, which campaigns for increased funding for Cerebral Palsy research, helps recruit people with CP for clinical trials, and directly provides resources for studying topics that may help diagnose, prevent, and cure CP. In addition Brad builds assistive devices for his son using everything from 3d printers to soft circuits. You can read more about his work at http://www.littlebeluga.com/Welcome.aspx
I had the chance to sit down with him and ask about the state of assistive devices for CP, how he got into making them himself, his favorite tools, and the research he believes will have the greatest impact on the lives of people with CP.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
