Triumph Over Trauma

Hardware and software solution to reduce negative PTSD and anxiety impact in daily life.

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Inspiration

The majority of our team has struggled or has a loved one struggling with PTSD and anxiety. These mental health conditions affect millions of people worldwide, and their repercussions can be emotionally, physically, and socially devastating. Since half of our team is also from low-income families, we wanted a solution that was more accessible for individuals who did not have access to expensive resources.

What it does

Triumph Over Trauma is a hardware and software solution that utilizes a physical heart rate and SpO2 sensor as well as a software symptom logger to provide beneficial resources to individuals affected by PTSD or anxiety.

How we built it

For our hardware, we used an Arduino R3 and a MAX30100 pulse oximeter sensor to serve as a heart rate and oxygen saturation sensor. We created a circuit diagram to show our plan before soldering to ensure that the functionality would remain. With the software side, we used HTML and CSS on the frontend and Python (Flask) for the backend. Our navigation bar skeleton was provided by bootstrap, but we customized this. Also, flask provided the low-level configuration that allowed us to not worry about the intricacies but instead allow us to work directly with routing, URLs, and API calls.

Challenges we ran into

We had three main challenges that we faced in this project. The first challenge was hardware-related, considering we originally planned to have a fully functioning 16x2 LCD that displayed the live results of the pulse and SpO2 reading. Unfortunately, we did not have enough time to troubleshoot this -- but plan to implement this solution in the future. Our second challenge was front end development of our website, seeing as the main designer was taking on the task of learning and developing simultaneously. This second challenge we were able to overcome as a team, which contributed to our success. The third and final challenge worth noting is the attempted implementation of ChatGPT's API where we unfortunately did not have full developer access prior to coming into the hackathon. This is something that we should have done more research on prior, and plan to implement after we are removed from the waitlist for developer access.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

There are many great accomplishments that came out of this project! The configuration of flask is a noteworthy accomplishment, considering that this process requires a lot of virtual environment manipulation and was very specific. Additionally, our hardware component is a great accomplishment due to the fact that we had never created a project like this before and only had one team member with an electronics background.

What we learned

As a team, we learned version control and the implementation of frameworks. Additionally, due to our original plans some members of our team were exposed to APIs for the very first time. With this, we were all able to gain hardware and electronic experience, since only one member had this background. Another member of our group was able to learn HTML and CSS in twenty-four hours. Most importantly, we were able to gain experience working in a professional group setting full of collaboration and teamwork.

What's next for Triumph Over Trauma

In the future we plan to incorporate an ethernet shield or a Wi-Fi module for automatic streaming of sensor data. Our LCD will also display a live reading of your pulse and SpO2 directly on the hardware setup. Additionally, a generative AI Chatbot will be utilized to provide more individualized resources based on habits, routines, and previous saved data will be a great addition to the application in the future.

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