Seen at #MakerFaire: Smart Spirometer, Pressure Sensor, and other DIY Medical Devices from @makerhealthco
Maker Health had some projects on display at the recent World Maker Faire. They describe themselves as:
At MakerHealth we believe in democratizing the tools of health making around the world. Whether it’s a hospital bed, smart pill bottle, or an improved triage mobile phone app we believe that design should be transparent, hackable, and enabling for everyone to be the designers and makers of their own healthcare solutions.
Two of the projects they showed included this pressure sensor which displays the applied pressure to the pad on the OLED FeatherWing add-on:
Also on display was this Smart Spirometer, a device used to monitor air flow into and out of a patient’s lungs – used to diagnose symptoms such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease:
You can see the spirometer mounts into the base; the tabs around the edge (seen better below) swivel around and hold the spirometer in place. The VCNL4010 proximity sensor knows when the spirometer is or is not in place and if not, the device can activate a range of notification modules (light, or sound, or vibration) to notify the patient to initiate their spirometry test.
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.
