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WearDuino Uses Arduinos to Make Wearable Medical Sensors (Video)

Posted by Roblimo on from the it's-not-a-tricorder-but-may-be-a-big-step-in-that-direction dept.

WearDuino, now being developed by PDX Wearable Health Lab, is the brainchild of Mark Leavitt, MD, PhD; "an experimenter, maker, mentor and consultant in wearable health technologies, drawing on his lifelong experience in the fields of engineering and medicine." The WearDuino, he says, "is an open source wearable wireless sensor." The prototype fits in a FitBit case because, according to Dr. Leavitt, there are millions of unused ones out there, both surplussed by people who bought Fitbits and then stopped using them, and in the form of aftermarket cases sold to make your Fitbit cuter than when it came from the factory. In any case, WearDuino is still in the prototype stage. Dr. Leavitt plans to look for funding through Crowd Supply, but isn't "there" yet, so if you want to get on board with this health wearables project, you'll want to sign up for their Google Group or follow them on Twitter. You might also want to check out Quantified Self (tag line: "self knowledge through numbers"), and even if you vastly prefer videos to text articles, check out the text transcript ("Show/Hide Transcript") attached to this article, because it contains nearly twice as much information as the video, and goes a little deeper than the video into Dr. Leavitt's reasons for building the WearDuino -- none of which are financial gain, believe it or not.

6 of 14 comments (clear)

  1. WearDuino? by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 1

    So what... LilyPad Arduino ain't good enough for ya?

    1. Re:WearDuino? by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 1

      After visiting the FitBit website, there seems to be a lot of different form factors of this thing. Maybe I'm missing the point.

    2. Re:WearDuino? by Mark+Leavitt · · Score: 1

      The LilyPad's great, but it only has an Arduino processor -- no Bluetooth wireless or sensors -- so you have to add other boards, soldered on with wires or sewed with conductive thread, to get a basic wearable wireless sensor.

  2. Quantified Self by thedonger · · Score: 1

    Because we don't spend enough time looking at our phones as it is. [Obviously, that doesn't apply to people need to quantify themselves in various ways due disease, etc. But JTFC, do you really need to track your steps at a music festival? Most of them were probably just you twirling in a circle while on e.]

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  3. Hell has frozen over by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

    A video. On Slashdot. And I watched all of it.

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    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  4. technical question by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

    Do you think I could hook six of those up together in a Beowulf cluster? I want to attach them to my johnson.

    "Man, that Beowulf cluster is fast" "Yeah, it's deep, too."

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