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An open source chocometer to measure blood glucose level using IR light

Posted on May 25, 2015 by R-B 2 comments

marcelclaro’s entry to HAD Prize 2015 is an open source Chocometer that can measure the glucose level in blood by shining an infrared light source.

Diabetes mellitus is a global problem, in 2013, 382 million people have diabetes worldwide, most with more than 45 years, and global economic cost in 2014 was estimated to be $612 billion USD.The future projections are not encouraging.All forms of diabetes increase the risk of long-term complications (cardiovascular disease, blindness, chronic kidney desease, etc.), however, the complications of diabetes are far less common and less severe in people who have well-managed blood sugar levels.

Today, the diary glucose level check can be done at home, nervertheless, its need a little drop of blood and a chemical reaction strip. So, this check becomes painful and expensive (each strip could cost 0.33 USD). These drawbacks decrease the patient adhesion to treatment.

I propose a glucose meter design based on light absorbance of glucose that already been extensively studied and sucessful applied in laboratory scale.

Open source chocometer

Low cost game console using PIC32

Posted on May 13, 2015 by R-B One comment

Alexander Shabarshin’s XORYA is a low-cost game console using PIC32MX170F256B microcontroller.

XORYA extremely low cost game console that consists of just 1 chip (in its base configuration) – DIP28 integrated circuit PIC32MX170F256B (32-bit MIPS core, 256K flash, 64K data memory) with cost below $5 and a few capacitors and resistors. XORYA is connected to NTSC TV through composite video input and it’s running applications created with help of open source XORLib game library ( http://xorlib.org ) specifically developed for this platform. XORYA may produce a number of black and white video modes (with 640×200 maximum resolution) and (potentially) stereo audio with 15734 Hz sample rate (through PWM). Also with external crystal 14.31818 MHz and 2 more capacitors it may produce color NTSC signal similar to “composite” mode CGA with 16 colors (actually 15, because 2 gray colors look the same) and resolution 160×200. Finally XORYA may receive inputs from up to 10 push buttons (12 if you count RESET and PAUSE). Goal is to get cheap software/hardware platform for “old school” gamedev.

Arduino measures heart beat rate from fingertip

Posted on May 6, 2015 by R-B 33 comments

The PIC16F628A based heart rate meter is one of the most popular projects published on Embedded Lab. In this article, I am going to show how to replicate the same project using a simpler platform like Arduino. The Arduino heart rate meter will use Arduino Uno, Easy Pulse Plugin, and 4-digit SPI seven segment LED display module. It computes the heart beat rate by processing the analog pulse signal output from the Easy Pulse Plugin sensor and displays it on the seven segment display module. The heart beat rate is refreshed every ~3 sec.

Heart beat rate meter using Arduino and Easy Pulse Plugin

DIY Soldering Robot

Posted on May 5, 2015 by R-B One comment

The DIY Soldering Robot was an ongoing project of Brian Dorey for a while and now he has just been able to finish it and test it with some real-world soldering.

DIY soldering robot

The DIY soldering robot which we have been building in our spare time over the past few months is now working and we have been able to solder some test Raspberry Pi expansion board headers with the machine.

Before starting on this robot we looked at the various commercial soldering systems that are available. Wave soldering machines would have been impractical as the connector is on the top side of the board next to the surface mount components. Wave soldering would also coat the full length of the pin in solder which we don’t want to do as it would make it more difficult to stack the boards.

There are several commercial soldering robots available and we got quotes for some of them but we decided that they were either too big, too slow or too expensive, with most costing more than a new car. In the end we decided that what we wanted was so specialized it would be easier and cheaper to make one ourselves.

We tried to design the machine in a way that would be small and easy to replicate so if we need to speed up production of our boards we can quickly make more soldering robots and have a row of them running on a desk. A Bluetooth module was added to the design so when we do build more robots we can use one master robot to wirelessly control several slave machines.

Check out this cool demo of his robot in action.

[Via: Hackaday]

Arduino powered liquid/powder dispenser system

Posted on May 5, 2015 by R-B 2 comments

An accurate dispenser system for liquids and powder using Arduino.

Arduino dispenser system

First things first, let’s put together the interface. It will make some of the calibration steps later a little easier. Starting with the LCD screen, and associated potentiometer dial (put on the pump circuit board), wire up a breadboard according to the diagram above. The potentiometer is only there to control the contrast on the screen, so it doesn’t need to be on the front panel, cramping the rest of the interface.

Next comes the buttons. The two little button were salvaged from the scale circuit board, so you can wait to put them in unless you have other buttons you’d rather use (bigger buttons might suit your fingers better). The green button is the GO button, the red button is the STOP button, and the yellow button is the OK button for menu navigation. The two little buttons are used as LEFT (cyan) and RIGHT (purple) to navigate the menus. Wire them up like the left breadboard in the diagram above.

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