This week has been all about coding. We spent time on adjusting our code in order to have LED alarms when the following conditions occur;

>5 contractions in 10 minutes

One contraction >120 secs

<60 second intervals

The three LED s each of them, have been mapped to one of the three conditions stated above. They are to warn the doctor that Uterine rapture is about to occur. Hence each LED will light up immediately when one of the conditions is fulfilled.The code works quiet good and below is the diagram of it;

 

 

The above picture has the new prototype we worked on this week.It is smaller than the older one with a sewing elastic in between to keep it compact. We also had two types of tape we ordered and the tapes  arrived this week. We tested them by taping the device to our stomachs ,we imitated pregnant woman’s contractions and seeing if the device can stay intact on the belly. KT tape did a much better job than athletic tape.The picture above on the left shows how it can be attached to the belly of a pregnant woman.

We also worked on the code for the LED matrix  Partograph  display for doctors to see the strength of the contractions with relation to duration.Below is the diagram of ideally what we want to come up with;

On the right side of it is an ordinary Partogrph which is used by doctors in malawi.

We did some research on means of displaying information using LED matrices. We came accross two solutions which involve using the LED s which can be laid on the breadboard of an arduino. The challenge is the number of pins on the arduino board available are a few.Suggested we use registers but we will have to look more into that more .We ordered an Adafruit display to see if we can work with it, other wise part of our current code is working good.

We also scheduled an appointment with our client DR Carns so that we know what she thinks about on our progress so far, and if  she has any suggestions.Also whats her take on replacing the hypo tube with an opaque flexible tube.Since the hypo tube gives us some doubts , we think its inflexibility affect the device’s performance.And if we cant replace it we can figure out the appropriate  length. Also we wish to know how much of a  belly can stretch during contractions it will be more helpful in coming up with our higher fidelity prototype.

We also had presentations on the progress of our projects on Thursday. It was really wonderful to see how we all have progressed. go teams!!!