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is the url for my project.

1eye wrote: is the url for my project.

WHAT project...?

euphoniaa wrote:

1eye wrote: is the url for my project.

WHAT project...?

The following is at the link shown above. I am asking for $2,000,000. I think my trigger-point would be if I got 1/1000 of that -- boy I'd have to start working... I would work for no money...

I would like to see a device developed which uses currently available position sensing hardware, such as devices from Sensor Fusion, to present highly accurate detailed high-speed balance information to display devices such as currently available augmented reality glasses and earphones, perhaps with the aid of a cell-phone-type device. The hardware and software development would be the main cost of this project.

Rounding up good developers is tricky, but having been in that business for twenty-five years, I do know a few. So it will take me a few months to really get going, but work can start any time I can get people on board.

This means, for one thing, I might be able to avoid falls and walk without my walker. I have had quite a few falls, some serious, in the last twenty years. You do not want to see the pictures. If this device works it will be obvious, and no randomized trials will be needed. It can then be made cheaply and sold to everyone who needs one at a very low comparative cost.

This device may even help with another little-known sense, which is definitely affected in MS: it helps us know what our body is doing, and in what position it is, even when we can't see or directly feel it. The technical name for this is proprioception.

The assistance of the caregiver and possibly even the medical communities may be required to keep users from going overboard and hurting themselves. Re-learning to walk with reduced strength and coordination may take time for those who are afflicted in more than just the balance sense (like me).

I believe instinct will prevail, if the brain finds a way to use the available senses. Neuroplasticity will make a user able to retrain the right parts of the brain. If it works well, it will be obvious. For those whose sight or hearing is also afflicted, the device may still work, using whatever nerves are left. Total blindness and deafness are relatively rare, compared to partial loss in MS.

I would be grateful, both for the opportunity to use such a device myself, and the opportunity to make thousands of others available to those who need them.

The way this device works is this: you put your cell phone in your pocket, a pair of augmented reality glasses on your face, and a pair of earphones in your ears. You hear a noise (like an out-of-tune radio hiss). You see a semi-transparent orange frame superimposed on a normal view of the world. Your task is to try to move your head to a balanced position, and stay there. The closer you get to that, the less noise you hear. The closer you get to a balanced position the closer you get to changing the frame from orange to green. This audible and visible feedback allow you to feel balanced, and be balanced.

Simple as that. Future developments include other devices, worn on other parts of the body, which communicate with the glasses and earphones, and provide audible and visual feedback to your proprioception sense.

The feedback includes (most types of feedback are optional) audible echos which you also attempt to minimize, off-center audio, using the stereo effect, which you also try to minimize (center). There are visual effects which you also try to null out, making them disappear, for longer and longer times, culminating in the frame changing to green. If you get balanced for a long enough time, the green frame, and the audio effects, will become more transparent, and eventually disappear. This way your eyes, ears, and brain all know when you are fully balanced, or off-balance, and how much. Would you like to walk? Ride a 2-wheeler? I think, after training with this device, you can.

Yes we can. Catchy, no?

For anybody interested in what is possible, the first part of this video shows what kind of things orientation sensors can do. The rest I believe shows a data logger, as the wearer walks up stairs. I don't think this helps the wearer to walk, but if combined with proprioception feedback, who knows?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ijArKE8vKU

Some position sensing hardware you can buy today:

Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and Attitude Heading Reference System (AHRS)

http://www.x-io.co.uk/products/x-imu/

As I see it there are a number of things it would be good to know: altitude, compass bearing, level, plumb, pitch, yaw, roll, and probably more. Humans have two sets of 3 pitch, yaw and roll sensors, one in each ear. These are what we want to enhance/replace using the other senses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7JQ7Rpwn2k has a talk on position sensing/sensor fusion: at 4 minutes and 23 minutes there is a pen being used to control an image of a sword on a screen. This is about the size we would wish it to be in Even Keel, and he is still using it in the Grand Canyon at about 41 minutes. I think if this guy (David Sachs) was on the development team for Even Keel we would be home free.

This talk is about 45 minutes but I find it fascinating.

The description has had a rewrite. See again.

Scroll down to where it says "Story".

A guy who is one of the people who developed the machine-self-location software, answered one of my emails. The information in his answer is proof this idea will work.

He is:

Dr Sebastian Madgwick
Director and Lead Engineer
x-io Technologies Limited

He wrote the following:

I recently read Oliver Sack's book: 'The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat'. In this book, he describes a patient who lost their sense of balance. The patient attached a spirit level to a pair of glasses and gradually 're-wired' their brain to substitute this visual reference in place of the natural sense they had lost. Here is a description of this part of the book from wikipedia:

> "On the Level," another case involving damaged proprioception. Dr. Sacks interviews a patient who has trouble walking upright and discovers that he has lost his innate sense of balance due to Parkinson's-like symptoms that have damaged his inner ears; the patient, comparing his sense of balance to a carpenter's spirit level, suggests the construction of a similar level inside a pair of glasses, which enables him to judge his balance by sight.
>

This is exactly what the device I described in my GoFundMe story is supposed to do. I can now go out and test it, by simply attaching a spirit level to a pair of my glasses. If it works, I should regain my sense of balance, maybe even permanently. Anybody reading this post can do the same (though, of course, I take no responsibility if you are unsuccessful or hurt yourself). Just affix (with glue or silly putty) a spirit level to a pair of glasses. Then you will have the instant visual feedback corresponding to your personal level-ness that I have been talking about. The "Even Keel" device could enhance it with auditory feedback, but you may even be successful with the more primitive spirit level device.

Looking at a real carpenter's level, it may have a couple of bubble chambers, corresponding to both level and plumb (level you can understand, plumb is up-down). You might add a third bubble chamber at a diagonal to both of the other ones, to show you yaw, or angular rotation. With these three you have a visual equivalent of your inner-ear's balancing canals. The fact that the ones in your ears are semi-circular is also useful. A glass-blower could construct a similar type of level for your eyes. Add a second triplet of these bubble-tubes and you could have a set of three semicircular bubble-chambers in front of each of your two eyes. Six degrees of rotation, all visible, and usable by your brain's neuroplastic balance sense.

I will try to have this spirit-level visual balance device constructed, and test it on myself. I hope I live to see that day.

Please read and scroll down to see "My Story". Also click the link that says "Updates".

Another update: I seem to have found a good starting point for the electronic AHRS (altitude and heading reference system). It is at https://github.com/ptrbrtz/razor-9dof-a ... rial#intro. You will find there movies of the thing in action.

I also found a Chinese source for the little bubble vials inside of bubble levels. I still intend to build a bubble-level device (after Oliver Sacks) as well. That way I will have a good chance of a demo on myself.

The other interesting ingredient is a "Soundscape Renderer", a software package for linux, that allows good things to happen via headphones.

The system doesn't necessarily need augmented-reality glasses. There are also Sparkfun's LED glasses, a stripped down version of which may be all that is needed.

Bright Eyes is DIY technology kit that encourages people to learn programming. It is a pair of glasses which have 174 LEDs for you to program. These LEDs can play back graphics and videos off a micro SD card (video player), or be controlled using any microcontroller platform.

A subset of only some of these LEDs may be all that is required for the visual interface. The software might be able to use varying brightness, so as to be both accurate and unobtrusive. The cost is definitely lower, though some augmented reality glasses may be cheap enough too.

Actually, a carpenter's level can react to roll (side to side), pitch (forward and backward) and yaw (angular rotation) Two of these are relevant to a 2-dimensional plane, to assess whether it is level. But what about plumb, or the sense of up and down? For that, you can use a weight or plumb bob, or a gyroscope. A bubble-level works too, since the spirit bubble uses gravity, and has a built-in sense of up-down when the bubble rises to the top.

There is a device called a head tracker. For about $50 you can buy an arduino board, a sensor board, and there is a free code base for it. The boards are tiny. See picture.

This version of what we are trying to build will work when facing in one direction. It works fairly well, for what it is. The real thing will have to cope with being turned 360 degrees. You can see this headtracker at work at https://youtu.be/oVrn7cHsPew and https://youtu.be/ulEBa8UEbGQ

I have been realizing that proprioception is key, and the arduino or other code that we use should be able to stimulate touch sensors as well, to complement the audio and video feeds.

I believe I have better control over my left leg when I give it a touch under the knee. That type of feedback may also be included.

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showatt. ... 9220&stc=1

Was looking at head tracking devices. Apparently they are export controlled because the US military thinks they might be used by the wrong sorts of people. I agree they should not fall into the Wrong Hands. I'll do my best to make sure they don't.

You can see these devices at:

You might need to sign up for a vimeo account.

I have decided on the RGB Shades which was a successful Kickstarter project. I am nearly ready to start using them. I have bought an Arduino and a little daughter board with an accelerometer and gyroscope on it. There is also a thermometer on the same chip but I don't think I'll need it.

This little board needs a calibration cycle, so I thought I would run one. To prove it works, here is one cycle's worth of calibration data. This text was printed out by the Arduino calibration program. It takes 1000 readings and averages them.

*****************************************************the calibration print-out*****************************************************************************
...
...
...

FINISHED!

Sensor readings with offsets: -5 -2 16384 2 0 -4
Your offsets: -2885 1378 4644 70 19 9

Data is printed as: acelX acelY acelZ giroX giroY giroZ
Check that your sensor readings are close to 0 0 16384 0 0 0
If calibration was succesful write down your offsets so you can set them in your projects using something similar to mpu.setXAccelOffset(youroffset)

*****************************************************the calibration print-out*****************************************************************************

So I hope to have prototype number 1 working shortly. Wish me luck.

Chris

There is a tutorial for using the head tracker at https://github.com/ptrbrtz/razor-9dof-a ... he-tracker

If you look in the section about calibrating the magnetometer (compass) you will see a lot of pictures drawn using MATLAB software, which contain a spherical shape (white) with a lot of dots superimposed on it. These dots represent real readings from the sensors, and you may notice an elongated ellipsoid shape to them. This represents real measurements taken with a head tracker on someone's head.

The ellipsoid shape is a good diagnostic tool.

If your head movement is pathological, you will not see this elongated shape. I expect if your atlas joint or some other problem (muscular?) exists with your head movement, you will see that distortion in this shape.

I expect this project (the one I am working on with neuroplasicity) will end up having to buy, beg, or borrow somme MATLAB software.

Also, I got a pair of very cool RGBShades glasses with many LEDs, which I intend to use to do the sight part of the neuroplasticity, and a tiny little PCB with audio amplifiers and software to play audio files, for the hearing part. All the software for these parts is public domain, and there are many people using it for head-trackers, quadcopters, LED shades, and audio head tracking.

Just an update, to let you know I am still working on this...