The invention that helped me write again - BBC News

Awesome! Great invention!

I stumbled across this on YouTube, and the commercial applications of this technology staggers the mind. So, from early 12/8/2016 I have been trying to contact Haiyan Zhang in London. To ascertain if Ms. Zhang,
needs representation in North America. Guess what? She is a Director of Innovation at Microsoft, England. Well...

She is a busy lady who stated she hopes someone makes a commercial product from her idea's.

She had over 10,000 emails in her pending folder since 2014. Any technical details if they appear, will be on the BBC's GitHub web site, maybe check back in a few weeks. GitHub - bbc/MiD: Make it Digital: the BBC's Digital Creativity initiative

Meanwhile I should have my bag of parts arriving from Digikey and make up a quick prototype to see how I do with the six vibrating motors around my wrist and if it makes a difference. BBC has a couple of different "to fit time length" versions of the show and one had a screen shot of the motor pattern.

Thank you TexasTom for getting the ball rolling. Please let me know how you get on. I, too, am trying to build an "Emma". My parts list and approximate prices is:
Arduino Pro Mini 3.3V - £3
6 x 3v micro vibrating motors in coin format - £3
3.3v step up power supply - £3 - this lets me run it off 1 AA battery.
3xAA battery box with switch - £1. I can strip out two of the battery bays and use this space to hold the electronics.
Wrist guard with Velcro straps - £1
Wire, misc £1.

John

a respected member of this forum stated, on another thread..."this simple gadget" reduces tremor.

another member of this forum has been on the phone, for as long as his voice heldout, for five days calling everyone in the rolodex, who might have knowledge as to how to make such a "gadget". That is, how could it be replicated (from Profs of medicine at UCLA, Stanford,etc, Profs of EE at Georgia Tech, and a couple universities in Boston, to the individual who won the Beverly Hills High School Science Fair). They kept talking about: "amplitude, wave length, motor muscular, electric impulses, input/ output, feedback loops(?), measurement, variance of frequencies, etc,etc,etc. It maybe a little complex to make.

job1119,

Point taken, but why let this stop us?

The problems are many:
- perhaps the gadget only works for Emma's version of PD;
- perhaps the response seen was only a placebo (but, let us not write off placebos, they have a value);
- perhaps the gadget has more complexity than we think (before this programme was broadcast I thought the solution was to fire tiny electrical shocks at the arm so as to cancel out the signals causing the tremor).

Progress has been made in similar areas: the non-spill spoon; a gyroscope strapped to the wrist.

I like the ethos of the show: you have a problem, we can likely reduce it. Or, taking it one stage further, I have a problem, I can likely reduce it.

The rapid development approach adopted by this programme, with its "can do" attitude, contrasts with the Big Pharma/ Big Medicine/ FDA approach of creating hurdle after hurdle to climb over.

John

As far as I know no further details of the "Emma" have been published. So, I've gone ahead with my own ideas of how vibrating motors may reduce tremor.

I've built my first prototype using 3 flat vibrators.

The device runs off an Arduino Uno, which is connected to my laptop. This allows me to have better control of the settings, but at the cost of being tethered to the machine. It will be easy to make the device stand-alone, with the electronics about the size of a pack of cards, and later down to watch size. The vibrators (diameter about 8mm and height about 4mm) are positioned on a velcro strap around my wrist.

The user experience is pleasant, and you quickly forget that it's there. The device makes a noise. I find this OK, but other people might object.

Does it work? I don't know. I've convinced myself that with a bad setting (e.g. 5Hz) it makes my tremor worse. I've not managed to find any setting which has definitely causally reduced my tremor, but 0.5Hz and 10Hz look promising. Even with the placebo effect working to my advantage, I've been unable to find any setting which has stopped all tremors. However, and it may be just coincidence, I've had many cases where I've changed the frequency and the tremor has reduced within seconds. Unfortunately, because the tremors are so variable this does not prove that the device works.

At any time only one vibrator is in focus. You can set how long it is switched on for. Focus then goes to the next vibrator, and so on until a lap around the wrist has been completed. (It is in this sense that I mean the frequencies above, e.g. 5Hz with 3 vibrators delivers an individual pulse of vibration every 1/15th second.)

The next thing to do is to find a way of collecting statistics in as blind a way as possible. In addition to measuring the short-term impact on tremor I need to monitor the effect on bradykinesia and any long-term effects.

If anyone wants any help in building one of these devices, please get in touch.

John

I've heard that train rides are very soothing to PWP.

John,

I did hear back from the designer, who said more details will be published in 2017.

The original protope used six motors. You can see them inside the watch band like device. The actuators firing pattern is shown in this screen shot.

Pattern is 2000ms (2 seconds). Each state is for 100mS. Simple job for a micro. I was looking at using two "N" sized batteries (shorter than AAA) and 3D printing a housing with battery, microprocessor, and the six motors embedded into the band.

Haven't had any free time to work on this the past few weeks.

1 1 1 0 0 1 State One 0x25

0 1 0 0 1 0 State Two 0x12

0 0 1 0 0 1 State Three 0x05

1 1 1 0 0 1 State Four 0x35

0 0 0 1 1 1 State Five 0x07

1 0 1 0 0 0 State Six 0x24

0 1 1 0 0 0 State Seven 0x14

0 1 0 1 0 1 State Eight 0x15

1 0 0 0 0 0 State Nine 0x20

0 1 1 1 1 1 State Ten 0x1F

1 0 0 1 0 0 State Eleven 0x24

0 0 1 0 0 1 State Twelve 0x09

1 1 0 1 0 0 State Thirteen 0x34

0 0 1 1 1 1 State Fourteen 0x1F

1 0 0 1 0 0 State Fifteen 0x24

0 1 0 0 0 1 State Sixteen 0x11

1 0 1 1 1 1 State Seventeen 0x2F

0 1 0 0 1 0 State Eighteen 0x12

0 0 0 0 0 1 State Nineteen 0x01

1 0 0 0 0 0 State Twenety 0x20