Notes from the Phoenix IEEE lab, 2008/11/08
Our categories of work:
- Improving the sensors and amplifier/filter boards
- Investigating the Chen patent
- Building a prototype microcontroller/DAQ board
- Reducing the cost of the $200 Home ABPM kit to $100
- Investigating optoelectronic sensors
This week's activities:
The email list is set up and working. Everyone should feel encouraged to post all discussions to the email list.
Steven James has returned to the project in the form of a part-time consultant.
I "demonstrated" the $200 Home ABPM "kit" from a couple of years ago.
I
brought in a laptop that was donated to us, and started installing
LabView on it. (This laptop will stay in the lab for any team
member to use at any time for LabView DAQ work.)
We discussed shortcomings (e.g., 1Hz phase distortion) of the filter part of Wade's original amplifier/filter board.
Chase
and I tried to follow William's instructions to get U of MN library
cards, and were stopped at the border. Information from the
reference desks seems to indicate that our best route would be to
become unpaid staff of the Chronobiology or Electrical Engineering
departments.
Active tasks:
Chase is summarizing some of
the commercial product technology he's been reading about, considering
buying another NI DAQ device, and looking into whether we should get a
second piezoelectric film kit.
Dr. Holte is looking into how we can get access to the campus wireless network or the EE/CS wireless network.
Dr. Holte is going to send Steven and Larry some web links related to encouraging students to enter Engineering fields.
I am talking to the coordination team about doing some recruiting to get a few more people involved.
I am contacting Wade Peterson and Mike Callaghan to recover lost project information from the past.
Mary Jo is making a copy of the damaged LabView device driver disks.
Steven is designing a a 555-based timer circuit for the $100 Home ABPM kit. Hopefully William will build it for us.
Steven is making some project managment notes.
Steven is looking at Wade's schematic in the hopes of being able to describe the details or design changes to it.
Vince
is investigating where we can get some optoelectronic sensors to start
playing with, and will give me a shopping list. Checking out
Nonin (Phil Isakson), Hutchinson Technologies, etc.
Vince is going to ask the student branch (Hans) for a computer account in the lab and a door pass.
William is talking to Dr. Holte about designing a change to Wade's circuit to use an instrumentaton amplifier.
Future tasks:
We need to come up with some more test leads and connectors, and a battery tester.
I'd
like to get 2 or 3 more of Wade's amplifier/filter boards made.
Dr. Holte thinks we can make some improvements to them at the same
time. William is going to talk to Dr. Holte about Dr. Holte's
ideas for improvements, specifically adding and removing a
voltage bias on the sensors and changing the amplifier characteristics
(possibly by switching to an "instrumentation amplifier" design).
In addition, we now have to consider changes to the filter.
I'd
like to have a detailed description of Wade's schematic, including
details about each subcircuit, the test points, the power supply, and
the input impedence.
We need a little project to identify and
mark the various piezo-electric films. It seems likely that that
we cannot trust any of the packaging any more, because of the number of
hands that have moved things around.
We need projects to
characterize AND DOCUMENT simple characteristics of the piezoelectric
films - specifically to understand whether thick backing vs. thin
backing is better, whether large surface areas vs. small surface areas
are better, etc.
We need to consider getting a BP device OTHER
THAN A CUFF to take continuous BP measurements while we're testing our
sensors and devices, for calibration and comparison purposes.
This is likely to be a high-dollar purchase, or donation from a
philanthropic organization.
-Larry
Volunteers Are Needed
Would you like to work on any part of this project? Envision a prototype, propose a way to implement it, and
send
your suggestion
to Larry. Or start out by just asking questions.
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