Spine Protractor

Inspiration

This is our story: our "back"story. This inspiration came from wanting to build something useful for people, starting with a problem many of us share—bad posture. Anyone can struggle with slouching, especially during long hours of work. Imagine working on a tiresome assignment and unknowingly morphing into a shrimp. The Spine Protractor is designed to help with this. Worn on your back, it monitors posture and buzzes if you slouch significantly for more than 30 seconds, offering gentle physical feedback without causing discomfort. This essentially forms a negative feedback loop so that we maintain optimal posture. The device is powered by an ESP32 and utilizes two MPU6050 sensors to track the acceleration and angle of your back, comparing data betweeb the two sensors to detect poor posture. Unfortunately, hardware was a real problem in this case. None of our team members are engineers and we came into this project with limited knowledge of electronics. Despite this, we got the code done and the circuit working--until it did not. 4 ESP32s in a row showed error messages with none of the mentors knowing what exactly was the problem. Yet, we are proud of the milestone we achieved and the knowledge we acquired over the past 24 hours. We also realised that proper preparation was key to success in these 24-hour hackathons. Had we brought our own hardware, we could have avoided hours of troubleshooting and completed the project on time. Most importantly, we learned that you don’t need an engineering degree to create something meaningful. With some sweat, grit, and creativity, everyone can do it!