DentX

Inspiration

We were moved by the plight of poor dental health in the US. According to research, "the CDC found that almost half of people over age 30 suffer from gum disease. More than 2 million people visited an emergency room in 2010 with dental pain". That number is representative of only a small fraction of Americans and an even smaller fraction of the global population that could benefit from DentX.

What it does

We adapted a Raspberry Pi to our use, in order to turn an ordinary toothbrush into an IoT device.Using self contained sensors and camera modules, we are able to detect a user's oral health status. We aim to use this product as a preventative product,solving the issue of poor oral health before it needs to be addressed by a medical personnel. Our product is also complemented by an app with fully functional and easy to use interfaces.

How we built it

We used an electric toothbrush and added a suite of sensors onto it in conjunction with our single board computer. Neither of us had strong skillsets with this hardware but we managed to learn on the fly with help from the Hacking teams.

Challenges we ran into

Our biggest challenge was in familiarizing ourselves with the hardware. Only one member of our team has had experience with Pi,breadboards, and the various modules needed for our project.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're most proud of how fast we learned during UB Hacking. Within 10 hours, we learned more about engineering with the necessary parts than we would've in 11 weeks of classes.

What we learned

This is not an easy task. While we learned a lot about the technical aspects of the project, we also learned more about the various health aspects as well.

What's next for DentX

We want to miniaturize DentX while reducing the cost of production. We may steer from our current use of a raspberry pi for something more case specific. We envision this to be a compact, inexpensive, and easy to use tool that can help improve the health of many around the world.