HandiAssistant

Inspiration

We were inspired to help those with Carpal tunnel syndrome, since we are all very fond of typing and also well aware of some of the negative effects of typing very hard. We also knew that the effects of Carpal tunnel syndrome negatively effects the way many people conduct daily activities, so we wanted to make a feature that would help these people conduct simple activities through automation and simple gestures made by the person.

What it does

Our hardware detects how much pressure is placed when typing on a keyboard and appropriately notifies a user when they are placing too much pressure when typing. We also have another feature that allows people with carpal tunnel to make simple gestures to automatically perform a task.

How we built it

We built it using basic hardware, such as a breadboard and combinations of resistors and capacitors, and advanced hardware such as Arduino ESP32. We also used Python and Javascript libraries (ex: serial, socket.io, Flask, and p5.js) to build the way we read data from the Arduino and generate notifications for users.

Challenges we ran into

Setting up the socket and data to read within a while loop was very difficult, and a major hindrance to us finishing the project.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of completing the hardware associated with this project, as it was very hard to envision and actually place into an actual working project.

What we learned

We learned that hardware hacks are extremely interesting and that is something we should pursue largely in the future.

What's next for HandiAssistant

We will look into expanding the range of our tool, by also incorporating items such as more sensors into our design, as well as making our overall design look neater and more applicable for many users.

Built With

• arduino
• javascript
• python
• serial
• socket.io