John-
Regarding your attempts to devise a sensor to measure a tremor, is it reasonable to try to "get on with life" while the sensor accumulates data in the background? It seems set up to frustrate yourself. That being said, consider mounting it on the end of a staff or cane to mechanically amplify the signal.
Another possibility might be to treat your wrist as a hinge point and strap the unit to your forearm. Then extend from that to some sort of two-part sensor such as a ring coming from the relatively stable forearm and a finger tip mounted "thimble". Then a counter such as the pedometer perhaps could count the number of times that the two parts closed the circuit in a given time span. Better yet - rig some sort of recording feature and wear it as long as desired then dump it to the PC.
Finally, something that I have championed over the years and which has been totally ignored
is the "one leg balance" where you record the length of time that you can stand on one leg without the other foot touching the floor, best out of five and each leg measured seperately. Not only cheap and portable, it can be used surreptitously as well. Gives you data on lower body strength, balance, etc.
Oh, one other thing. Are you familiar with what is called a "dance mat"? It has some real possibilities along these lines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_pad
Rick
Quote:
Originally Posted by johnt
In my opinion being able to measure PD symptoms can help in managing your Parkinson's.
Ideally there would be a reasonably priced (<£20, say) piece of kit available that would do the job accurately. I don't know of anything. Given this, it's down to finding DIY solutions.
My present need is to measure a particularly bad left hand tremor. It's more of a flap, eminating from my wrist and causing my whole arm to shake. My fingers are moving about 2 cm with a frequency of approximately 5.5 hz.
I want to be able to measure the effect of a potential therapy. My tremor comes and goes pseudo-randomly. So, to get a reasonable comparison of before and after treatment values, I need each measurement to last many minutes and to be non-intrusive, letting me get on with life while the measurement is being taken.
My previous attempt fails to do this because you need to keep your finger on a laptop's pressure pad while the measurement is being made. See:
http://www.parkinsonsmeasurement.org/toolBox/tremor.htm
A possible way forward is to use the latest generation of pedometers. These use accelerometer technology to count steps or, in our case, shakes. They cost about £10. They can come in credit card-like sizes, which can be attached to the hand. (Alternatively, ipods, and similar products have accelerometers and apps which use these.)
The pedometer I have is almost up to the job, but:
- it has a high threshold: responds to my bad left-hand tremor, but not to the smaller right-hand tremor;
- it seems to max out at about 3 hz, so the count of the number of shakes is reduced, but consistent, one run with another;
- it doesn't give the amplitude of the tremor (but I can estimate that separately).
If you have a pedometer, I'd be grateful if you'd try it on your tremor and let us know the results.
John |