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HERB's standard display, giving HERB's condition, the user's steps in their lifetime and in the hour.
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HERB reminding the user of how many steps they had to go until reaching their goal.
Inspiration
HERB was brought about by a love for fitness and our campus! Everyday we find ourselves walking miles on end to and from classes, clubs, meeting with friends, and wherever we call home, we conceived HERB as a companion for those long walks.
What it does
Simple, HERB counts your steps and reacts to your progress! It aims for you to reach 500 steps every three hours to keep you moving! Exceed that goal and it'll reward you but fall behind and HERB's health will begin to decline. The whole way it'll respond to your progress with a varied series of chimes to keep you motivated.
How we built it
Since we wanted people to fit HERB in their pocket we wanted a small form factor with all of the circuitry fitting onto a single breadboard. Much of the development time was spent in the Arduino IDE making sure steps were counted and the proper responses were recieved. HERB gained features as time went on, getting a voice with the addition of a passive buzzer and a face with a simple small display.
Challenges we ran into
As a team of first time hackers our problems were numerous. Our first major challenge was even getting our microcontroller to work as it wasn't recognized by our development environment but we remained flexible and changed hardware on the fly. Learning new libraries also posed quite a challenge as this was the first time any of us had worked with sensors and microcontrollers at this scale, everything was new to us and we made full use of all of our resources but we had fun the whole way!
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We're proud of HERB's varying personality and the way it behaves in response to the user's actions, we didn't want just a number giving HERB's condition but his dynamic face gives him more of a personality.
What we learned
We learned in hackathons you always have to stay on your feet and be flexible, pick and choose your battles with hardware and software, and always be willing to listen to your teammates, they have good ideas! Don't start with too big of an idea, start with something small and add features once the basics work!
What's next for Health and Exercise Regulation Buddy - H.E.R.B.
Our next realistic step would be to give HERB a shell and integrated battery. If we want people to take it walking it should probably be pretty solid and as it stands he's pretty exposed! Additionally the need to plug it into your own portable battery source means it isn't the most seamless use.
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