Our First Blog Post!
The Smithtown High School West InvenTeam is working on a Personal Distance Monitor (PDM), a device intended to help people monitor their personal space. This was originally envisioned to aid students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), who oftentimes have trouble maintaining an appropriate personal space. However, our device also becomes beneficial in social distancing during our current global pandemic. We are currently building a functional prototype along with an app that works harmoniously with our PDM.
The Smithtown High School West InvenTeam has been working hard the month of November. We have divided out jobs into five categories in order to successfully achieve our goals for our device: Finance, Blog, Engineering, Communications and Human Subject Research. Here is what each team has completed thus far:
Finance:
-The Finance Team has been completing their training and is organizing a google sheet to keep track of the budget. They are also organizing our tax exempt status with various vendors.
Human Subject Research:
-Similar to the Finance Team, the Human Subject Research team has successfully finished their training. Human Subject Research is especially important for our project as we plan on using both human subjects with ASD and without to test our device's effectiveness.
Engineers:
-The engineers have successfully compiled a list of new sensors and other technology to / from a functioning device.
-We plan for our device to work alongside an app that can chart progress to see if improvements in maintaining proper personal space are being made over time. The engineering team has formed the beginnings of the app with use of the MIT App Inventor and the BLE/Bluetooth 2.0 module. This allows the device to communicate with the app.
Communications:
The Communications team has been working diligently to write and film a video that demonstrates, in depth, the progress the engineering team has made. They have also been setting up our social media accounts so you can stay updated on our progress.
Social Media
Twitter- SHSWInvenTeam
TikTok- shswinventeam
Instagram- shswinventeam
Alongside this, we were able to share our story on the ABC7 New York News Channel in an interview with Kristin Thorne and appear in our local Newsday and The Patch newspapers. We are grateful and happy to hear that our story can reach many people in our community. We are incredibly thankful for the grant that gives us the opportunity to make a device that has the potential to help so many people!
Newsday Article: https://www.newsday.com/long-island/education/nassau-school-notebook-team-wins-10g-grant-1.50067625
ABC News: https://abc7ny.com/education/ny-high-school-wins-grant-to-develop-tech-for-kids-with-autism/7671806/
