SmartHelm

Inspiration

We were inspired by the prompt and by our own personal experiences and those of close friends with football-related concussions.

What it does

SmartHelm uses an IoT-enabled football helmet with a built-in accelerometer to monitor the levels of acceleration that players' heads experience on the field. If a player takes a hit that measures above a particular threshold, the coach is alerted via an app that the player may need to be removed from play.

How we built it

The smart helmet runs off of a Qualcomm DragonBoard 410c with attached accelerometer. We used Python to read sensor values and serve them over WiFi. The app, which reads and synthesizes data from all of a team's helmets, was built with React Native.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into issues with both the coach interface and embedded helmet device. On the helmet device, we had difficulties connecting to the internet, since both public wireless networks required extra authentication that we were unable to submit via the DragonBoard from command line. We worked around this issue by using a team member's phone as a WiFi hotspot. We also struggled with properly downloading and compiling the library we used to gather data from the accelerometer, but were able to get it right after many hours of scouring StackOverflow. On the coach interface, we struggled with React Native, as none of us had prior experience with the framework, but we were able to sort out our difficulties and create a functioning application.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are extremely proud that we were able to resolve our issues with each of the individual project components, and that we were able to integrate our full stack into a functional application in time for our demo.

What we learned

We learned how to use several new technologies, including React Native and the DragonBoard hardware. We also all improved our brainstorming and product design skills throughout the design process.

What's next for SmartHelm

We have a few major areas of improvement that we would like to pursue in the future:

• Improve design and features of the User Interface
• Set up the helmets to communicate with the app via Bluetooth to improve usability on real football fields
• Miniaturize the board and sensor for easier embedding in the helmet
• Add an in-helmet power source with wireless charging

Built With

• dragonboard-410c
• python
• react-native