We made more good progress this week on the Optoco, and gave our first formal presentation on our progress. On Monday, we spent most of the day working on the code to analyze the number and frequency of contractions measured by the Optoco. Using an Arduino, we were able to display the frequency and duration of contractions when we pulled the two pieces of fiber optic apart. We also started working on setting off an alarm when one of the 3 “danger” conditions occurs. (>5 contractions in 10 minutes, contraction >120 seconds long, contractions <60 seconds apart). By the end of the day Monday, we had written code to detect these three conditions and set off an alarm if any of them occcur.

 

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we worked on making a smaller version of our physical prototype so we could have a better idea of the final size and how the device would attach to the patient’s body. We designed and laser cut two smaller boxes and worked on the electronics for our new prototype. We now have two working prototypes, one pretty close to the scale of the final design. The boxes are still  a little larger than they will be in the final product, since we’re still using laser cut wooden boxes — once we move on to 3D printing, we’ll be able to make them even smaller and easier to tape on. We’ve also started testing out the different types of elastic material we might use in our final device. Our stretchy rubber accordion material came in, so we built another prototype around that, and we’ll make a final decision about whether to go with that or the sewing elastic next week.

Thursday we spent most of the morning preparing for our presentation, which we gave that afternoon, and then started to work on making an LED display for our device. We ordered an LED matrix that should arrive next week, and today we started writing pseudocode for the display.

We have Monday off because it’s the 4th of July — looking forward to the long weekend!