Inspiration
Stress is a nearly universal feeling. Everyone has it, everyone has to deal with it. However, the avenues for managing stress are often boring, long, or expensive - stress has also been heavily stigmatized in our modern world. With this in mind, we created Blinky - a simple memory based game that teaches players to manage their stress in an easy, gameified manner.
What it does
Blinky is a gameified stress-management app that teaches users how to stay calm under pressure. It uses a simple memory game, whose difficulty dynamically adapts to the player’s stress level. As stress increases, the game becomes harder - forcing players to actively regulate their breathing and focus to progress. Designed to integrate real biometric data like heart rate and breathing rate via the device camera, Blinky turns stress awareness into an interactive skill you can practice, not just track.
How we built it
We used a Raspberry Pi with QNX as the base for the physical game, and C++ for the backend of the project. Using I2C, we integrated an LCD screen to display the users progress and current stress level. This platform is designed to be integrated into a real-time biometrics system, that will track the user's current heart-rate and breathing rate to adjust the pace of the game.
Challenges we ran into
Some challenges we ran into were integrating our project with presage, a real-time biometrics tracker that uses computer vision to track heart rate, breathing rate, and more. With presage's large SDK and specific use cases, it was difficult for us to reliable integrate it and compile it for QNX.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Throughout this project, we have created a fully featured game, implementing real circuits and software to go from idea to product. It is very rewarding to see each step of the project come to life.
What we learned
We practiced our skills building circuits with multiple elements on a breadboard, as well as working with a new operating system and compiler architecture. To complete this project, we also had to learn how to use Docker for cross compilation and emulation.
What's next for Blinky
In future, Blinky can be integrated with real time sensor data, to dynamically adapt to user stress levels. It can also be adapted to other game formats, to include a wide variety of games appealing to many types of users.
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