NBC 2009Mar15

NoiseBridge Cyborg Meeting Minutes - March 15th, 2009

Names for Group?

• Sunday Cyborg Mass?
• Sunday Cyborg Assimilation Assembly
• Those Cyborg Folk
• motion to move on from names

Introductions

• Skory - linguist, computational technology, electronics & the brain
• Rachael - tired of introducing herself, not at best on sunday mornings
• Lamont - electrical engineer
• Mikolaj - San Diego, epilepsy suppression via direct electrode stimulus
• Todd - grad school for neuroscience
• Eric - applied mathematics, sensors,
• Christoph - mad scientist, flux gate magnetic sensor on CMOS, treating epilipsy
• Praveen - does software stuff, machine learning background, computational biology

Show & Tell

• Rachel - lilypad, small vibrating motors, purring cat pillow using capactive sensor (also made tribble)
• Todd - magnetic vibrating hat, has experienced very little local distortion - e.g. you need to be within a foot of fridge to get bad readings. Uses JameCo magnetic sensor.
• Skory - modulate a single vibrator to indicate moving in the direction of north, but his vibrator motor hasn't arrived yet, and code isn't quite done
• Eric - ring mouse again, battery from bluetooth headset, must bring in Forever Flashlight
• Mikolaj - magetic sensors, accelerometers are both ~$30 each
• Skory - parallax provides board for above, with chip, also $30
• Todd - has hacked WiiMotes, they are cheap
• Skory - speech visualization, spectrograph, formants, sibilants. Visually, tongue display - using 3D model of mouth based ono formants, sibilants from analysis. Stimulate the tongue in the same way that happens when the speech is produced (front, back, high, low). Check animation prior art?

API discussion

• 3 parts: sensor, physical form factor, outputs (from device to body)
• agreement on termonology: device centered or human centered
• "display" as the outputs (inputs to humans), "sensor" as the device
• "armature" as physical form factor - arrangement of sensors and displays, also where the device interacts with body
• transmit data as "display" - n x m array with x height in each cell

  e.g. 1 x 8 array for 8 motor hat, with amplitude in each cell

• Mikolaj - I2C - 2 wire bit banging protocol
• Christoph - recommends CAN to avoid wiring issues
• Eric - SPI.
• ZigBee?
• microprocessor on each end (sensor, display). Makes prototpying / swapping display/sensors across projects easier
• we're not ready to discuss API yet - we need to build some stuff to learn first. Make Instructables!

List of Sensors

• magnetic direction / electric compass
• accelerometer
• temperature / pressure / humidity
• electric field strength
• microphone / audio
• blood oxygen / oximetry
• heart rate
• electro-magnetic (light, radio (RFID), etc)
• GPS
• olfactory
• concentration of fluids (gases, liquids)
• echolocation / distancing / lidar
• strain gage
• EEG
• geiger counter
• polarized light sensor
• NIU (Praveen will bring one in)

List of Displays

• vibration (pager motor)
• heat
• pressure
• electrical - TENS - transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation
• visual overlays / edge of glasses
• smell
• pico projectors
• TMS - open TMS project
• phased sound array

List of Armatures

• hat / headband
• belt
• watch / bracelet
• tongue thing
• anklet
• noseplug
• buttplug
• head phones
• skin grid (e.g. on back)
• gloves
• piercing
• vest / corset

Initial Prototypes

• Skory: magnetic direction + vibrators + anklet/armband. Eric wants to help - everyone else is keen as well.
• Racheal: distance + TENS + back skin grid (eyes in the back of my head). Mikolaj wants something like this as a second project

Parts Ordering

• battery: 3.7V LiPo - Mikoloj has some - SparkFun sells some safe ones

- build to spec at MaxAmps (expensive, and target peak power)

• Arduinos - barebones - RBBB - Christoph has 4 at home
• FTDI cables - to program / display from Arduinos

Other things (not currently ordering):

• pager motors - lets test with variety before ordering more
• TENS - Praveen is ordering some
• distance sensors - parallax ultrasound sensors?
• tube to go around the vibrating motors (straws?)
• Christoph will pursue ZigBee stuff
• SparkFun - this week they are doing a web class on sourcing parts.

Cognative Tests

• standard aptitute test?
• games
• visual/auditory acquity tests
• lumosity.com