Citizen science: symptom measurement using DIY electronics made easy by Arduino board

I've just posted this on the Parkinson's forum, but it may be of interest to others.

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If you can measure something, you are part of the way to controlling it.

In many of my posts you'll find mention of on-line tap tests and tremor tests.

A weakness that they have is that they are intrusive, in the sense that you have to stop whatever you're doing in order to take the test. This isn't much of a problem if you're only taking one reading a day. But, suppose that you want to measure a process, such as the effect of a Stalevo pill over time, it does become a problem.

One of the symptoms of Parkinson's is the frozen face. I'm interested, therefore, in being able to measure my rate of blinking over the course of a day; trapping the number of blinks in each minute period.

Businesses and researchers have produced tools that measure the symptoms of Parkinson's continuously using electronics or smart phones. But, I'm not aware of anything that's available to the public at a low price.

Does anyone know of any such tools?

If they are not available, a DIY approach is needed. This, I've found out, is much easier than I thought.

My background has been in mathematics and software development, so I've always assumed that electronics was something that other people did. Of course, that led to many potentially promising lines of enquiry being closed to me.

Well, many years after it came out, I've come across the Arduino board. This costs about £25. It is the size of a pack of cards. Linked to a computer, via a USB port, it can be programmed in a simple C++-like language. Running alone, powered by a 9V battery, it can take readings continuously and store the results to a SD card. This can be read by your computer, and the results analysed.

One thing is missing, you have to provide enough electronic data, in the form of voltage changes, to represent the thing that you want to measure.

For instance, suppose that you want to measure temperature, you can use a thermistor, which is a device which changes its resistance as temperature changes. As part of a voltage divider, this provides the required voltage signal.

If you're interested, there's many, many videos on You Tube.

But, back to my blink problem. Anyone got any ideas?

John