Inspiration
Our teammate Nathalie was diagnosed with an early form of Tourette's Syndrome. Uncontrollable tics and constantly shaking hands make it difficult to text or even to write notes or emails on her phone. It was not only this fact that motivated us to pursue this project. We all aspired to give back to a community that is dear to our hearts. We wanted to create a revolutionary mobile feature that would make the ability to text accessible to cerebral palsy patients and amputees alike.
What it does
CodeWaves incorporates the Muse Wireless Headband and its SDK to read EEGs and deliver raw data in the form of numerical intervals and boolean values. For instance, the program would return TRUE or FALSE for every time a person blinks or clenches his/her jaw. We would take the dataset and use morse code to translate it into text output on your Android phone's screen. Morse code is divided into two characters: a period and a dash. A period is equivalent to one unit. A dash is three units. For the essence of time, we used blinking as the only action to use to output single characters.
How we built it
Our team built the technology using the Muse SDK and the pre-installed functions to extract the data into arrays of integers and boolean values. We used Android Studio and XML to create a substitute app to replicate messages on Android to demonstrate the program created with Muse. Every part of the project is hard-coded with the configuration of the Muse SDK and its compatibility.
Challenges we ran into
There were quite a few obstacles as first-time programmers with one other veteran hacker! The Muse wireless headband wouldn't work properly and differently with every team member. It only worked with one person. We figured it was partially due to faulty configuration and how the headband would fit a person's head. We debugged as much as we could halfway through SBUHacks. However, as a team-made decision, we decided to make it work as efficiently as possible with that one team member. He would only demonstrate it in the demo!
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are all extraordinarily proud of ourselves for attempting to create this innovative technology that has the potential to expand the boundaries of accessibility. It would not only change the lives for people who may not have texting as a privilege but also introduce a new modality for thousands and thousands of users. To complete CodeWaves in a day with the two hours of sleep we had during SBUHacks, we celebrated in tears. We knew the idea came with so much potential for everyone to see!
What we learned
For the first-time team members, they all learned about how to integrate an API into a program and the rush behind completing a hackathon project hours before the deadline! Nathalie told the entire team she took a non-technical key takeaway which was to never dismiss an idea instead to explore its potential in the first few hours.
What's next for CodeWaves
CodeWaves is parting in two directions as different technologies can be used to enhance its performance and purpose. Nathalie is taking it in the direction of a research project where the prototype can be funded for development and tested on cerebral palsy patients from the support of the Cerebral Palsy Foundation (CPF) based in New York City. Greg intends to purchase a newer model of the Muse Wireless Headband and continue to work from the technical prototype in accordance with his education.
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