Assignment 7: Two Hearts Beat as One

Inspiration

We’ve all had the intuition that the music we listen to can affect our heart rate, whether its getting us excited or calming us down, and at least one scientific study has found some evidence to confirm this suspicion. There is even some evidence that we may match heartbeats with our partners when we’re near them.

With this in mind I attempted to create a prototype to play a melody with the goal of encouraging the user to raise or lower their heart rate to match a target.

Setup

The program measures time between beats and translates that into a BPM measurement. This measurement is averaged with the target to create a match beat halfway between the target and measured BPM. As the rates converge the music plays in time with the heart beats of the user.

Beat measurements are simulated with a pushbutton, and a modulated sound output plays an F6 arpeggio at the match rate. F6 was chosen from experience to work well both as an uplifting and calming chord for either raising or lowering heart rate.

Demo

Tech Stuff

The circuit is pretty basic. A button pulls down pin 3 to trigger an interrupt which calculates the time since the last interrupt to measure current heart rate (this represents a heart monitor). Audio output is on pin 13 (with a 100Ω resistor in series), and the onboard RGB LED cycles along with each note in the sequence.

Code and wiring: BeatMaker.zip

 

 

Assignment #7 – Airplane Announcement

Problem: Info monitors on the back of seats in airplanes provide nice-to-have information, such as total flight time, time till destination, and nearby locations on the ground.  These monitors are often visual-only, assuredly to not disturb nearby guests, but this makes them inaccessible to the visually impaired.  Converting this information to audio inside earbuds or headphones would be an easy and unobtrusive fix.

Solution: Because these headrest monitors already have audio jacks, reusing them to communicate this information would be easy using established screen reading tech or more elegant selection methods beyond a touch screen.  This introduces the difficulty of limiting audio, and potentially distracting from important announcements.  This leads to the second possible part of this assignment: making often garbled announcements more understandable for those hard of hearing with this audio jack.  More or less, this all boils down to an interruptable info stream of important flight info.

Solution: The solution is simple, two psuedo-threads of audio, switchable between with a button press simulating a pilot or flight attendant’s announcement.  The “information” like distance to destination is simulated with a tone from a pot right now, since I have no idea about playing samples yet.  Being interruptable lets any outside announcement alert the user to plug in and listen, actually give them the info, or more.

Files + Video

Crit 2 – Stabilizing Device for Tremors

Premise

My family and I struggle with a progressive nervous system disorder that causes an essential tremor that starts in your hands when you’re younger (i.e. me), and migrates throughout your body as you get older (i.e. my mom).

Proposal

For this project I wanted to look into ways to help stabilize things you’re holding if you have a tremor. I made this device that uses an accelerometer to detect movement, and offset that movement by using 2 servo motors to control the x and y rotations.

To do this I researched Quaternions and Spatial Rotations.

There are three different state options: stabilizer: help for when you need to hold something still; pouring: help for when you need to pour something; normal: device does nothing.

Proof of Concept

Because of the complexity of offsetting movements and the fact that I am not knowledgeable enough with physics, I found it really difficult to make the stabilizer and pouring states work together. Hence, the demonstration above only shows the stabilizing state.

Adding to that, I struggled with the adjustment between the relationship of input data and sensitivity/stability of the device. In other words, I didn’t know how to make sure the device doesn’t jitter as much while reading live data. For future iterations, learning how to normalize the input data should help.

Fritzing Circuit Sketch

stabilizer_code

Assignment 7: sound over time, sound-by-interrupt

Due next Tuesday.

For this assignment, using an Arduino, generate sound-over-time and sound-by-interrupt that conveys meaning, feeling, or specific content.  You can generate sound with a speaker or a kinetic device (ex: door chime) or some other novel invention.

This is a good time to use push buttons or other inputs to trigger sound and another input to define the type of sound.

My example in class was how my phone *doesn’t* do this well.  If I am listening to music and someone rings my doorbell at home, my phone continues to play music *and* the doorbell notification sound at the same time.  What it should do is stop the music, play the notification, then give me the opportunity to talk to the person at the door, then continue playing music.

Class notes: 31 October, 2019

Starting Sound

Why is sound important?  We have binaural hearing and can point to the direction of a sound without any practice.

How do you “close your earlids” when you go to sleep?  How do children learn to speak?   Leonard Bernstein’s experiments with making sounds like a child and how common those sounds might be across cultures.

Close your eyes after following links in this section. don’t worry about the visual details and information, this is learning to understand sound and signals.

Classes of sounds (one view)

Signals / alerts — short sounds that transfer information

Songs and patterns that transfer information over time

We have a history of using air raid sirens from WWI and WWII as a means to notify the population of an area of an event or condition.

  • air raid siren, dual pitch  — my borough uses one of these at 9:45pm to signal curfew hours for children.  The local volunteer fire department have a different one they use to alert volunteers to a fire.
  • tornado sirens used to notify a town/area of a possible tornado

Music and entertainment

Psychological effects of sound

Is it genetics that cause us to respond to the sound of a crying human baby?  Can you think of an “angry” noise?  A “happy” noise? a “relaxing” noise?

Sketches, Fritzing, and 3d models

Sketches from sound-class-1 (including one I DID NOT show in class) and Fritzing a speaker to a transistor.

3d printed air raid sirens.

Critique 02: Assisting Individual Body Training through Haptics

Problem

When training our body and build muscles at a gym, it is really important to maintain the accurate and balanced pose and gestures – not only for not being injured but also for maximizing effects and keeping muscles balanced. However, when we go to the gym by ourselves, it is sometimes really difficult to reflect ourselves whether we are using the tools in the right way or not.

Solution

I thought about a device – that could be a smartphone with an armband or a smartwatch or the other devices that are attached to our arms – that provides haptic feedback to us so that we can keep the right pose.

For example, when we are doing push up on the ground, when we go down, the device checks the degree of our arms and time. After we go up and go down again, the device provides haptic feedback (various intensities of vibration) to signal to us that we have to go down a bit further to reach the right degree. When we reach that, it vibrates shortly, to let us know we did well.

Proof of Concept

I tried to code through Swift and use the gyro sensors in the iPhone. I believe I could develop this idea much further – it could check various degrees of our bodies when we are doing exercise, even stretching to increase our flexibility. Also, if it could keep collect data throughout the time, it will understand our capabilities of a certain exercise or part of our muscles, so that it could guide us to eventually increase our capabilities with the appropriate tempo without harming our bodies.

Videos and Codes

degreeChecker – code

 

Emotional Haptic Feedback for the Blind

Problem:

Haptic feedback as a means of delivering information to the visually impaired isn’t a new concept to this class. Both in class assignments and in products that already exist in the real world, haptics have certainly become a proven tool. However, I feel that there has not been much consideration as to the more specific sensations and interactions that haptics can provide.

Proposed Solution:

With this project, I attempted to create a haptic armband that adds another dimension of feedback: spacial. By arranging haptic motors radially around the arm, I was able to control intensity, duration, as well as surface area in order to create different sensations. Controlling these variables, I recreated the sensations of tap, nudge, stroke (radially), and grab.

In terms of applications, I think time keeping could be a great illustration as to how different sensations can play a role. For example, a gesture such as a tap or nudge would be appropriate for situations such as a light reminder at the top of the hour — on the other hand, a grab would be more suitable in situations such as an alarm or if a user is running late for an appointment. Other more intricate gestures such as a radial stroke could be for calming users down in stressful situations.

Proof of Concept:

Arduino Code and Fritzing Sketch

Crit 2: Key Fob Reminder System

Problem:

The blind and memory impaired can often have issues remembering small objects.  Keys, phones, and wallets are all easily misplaced items. Forgetting commonplace but important items can be especially frustrating and cause issues for people, especially if the behavior is repeated.

Solution:

A system that relies on RFID tags embedded in a keychain or fob can remind users if they left there devices on tables as they were leaving the house, as well as causing the device to ping when approaching household points of entry when needing a key, would afford users as to where there common household items were during. Items can become “lost” or misplaced even in book bags, and this system would allow for the user to feel a distinct “ping” for each device.

IMG_0069

Proof of Concept:

A system of RFIDs that signify whether a user is exiting or entering a common entrance would allow the reminder system to ping both the user and the device, and allowing the user to manually ping keys by pressing a button and triggering a dime motor.

Crit2

Your Personal Doorman

Idea

I often want to know who is at home when I’m on campus. If I’ve had a rough day – maybe I’d like to come home to chat with my roommate or maybe I’d like some alone time.

One might argue that Find My Friends has many of the features I require but as an Android user this feature is not available to me.  Another issue to point out is that if you live in an apartment building, like me, then there is some likelihood they they are not in the room – rather in somewhere else in the building.

If I was to extend the project, I would try to use IFTTT to notify me when someone enters and exits. Additionally, I would add temporary keys so that if friends or family are visiting they can temporarily unlock my door when they need to.

Proof Of Concept

To input the password, I decided to use a keypad. Every person has an associated key, so we can track who is entering the apartment. To further incorporate the kinetic requirement of this project – I added an ultrasonic ranger which ‘unlocks the door’ when a person stands near the door from the inside.  There are also modes which can disable certain keys from working if you need privacy.

Crit2 Arduino

Link to videos