SPRINGing to EurekaFest
Entire Team: TeamWORK works!
We just came back from Spring Break, but even then, we sacrificed part of our vacation to squeeze in another meeting. It was very helpful in contributing to our teamwork as we are now working together more, taking all of our progress, and putting it together into one device.
Detecting Team: Visuals...
This month, we are focused on testing out the entire device and see how it works. More specifically, we are focusing on testing each of the individual sensors (EDA and EMG) as well as our threshold values in order to improve the accuracy of the device. Additionally, in response to our MGTR advice, we’re trying to make the device more visually appealing, so if a child or teenager has epilepsy, they can comfortably wear this device without feeling self-conscious. In other news, we have the detection device in our hands, and we’re just working on minimizing the size of the device, another concern from the MGTR.
Injecting Team: ... Matter
Over the duration of the past month, we built another prototype using another type of electromagnet pump and solenoid. The purpose of these two tools is crucial to the treatment part of our project description: they work together to inject the medicine correctly. We are hoping to build a couple more prototypes this month, one of which would look somewhat similar to an insulin pump for diabetic patients. Like the detection team, we’re just going to make the current prototype smaller by ordering smaller pumps and solenoid, which will be used in future prototypes as well.
Now that both teams are almost off and running, we are looking into perfecting the device as a whole with the detection team. The main concern is getting the two parts of the device to “communicate” with each other: the detecting device will detect the seizure and immediately “tell” the pump and solenoid to do their job. We will finalize the details of this function soon.
Testing Team: Finalizing, Fixing, and… Fakeing?
We haven’t really changed much on what we’re working on because we truly want to perfect each and every aspect. For example, we had to fix the design of the EDA simulator in order to fit our needs because we recognized a major flaw in the design: the output was not in the range that we wanted. Nonetheless, we made progress. We were able to comfortably write a math equation on MATLAB, the program and platform on which we’re doing the simulation. We will finalize the code as soon as we work out the bugs in the EDA simulation. Then, we will put our fake arm to use and start testing the entire device made by the detection and injection teams.
Public Relations Team: PR stands for Preparing and Raising ($$$)
We may work more independently from the other teams, but we do more of the behind-the-scenes work. We are continuing to prepare for the EurekaFest presentations. We are currently thinking of ideas to present all of our hard work in an interesting way. Speaking of EurekaFest, we are continuing to fundraise on our GoFundMe page. We made a big leap this month when Italian Ristorante Roma agreed to donate a percentage of people’s meals to our team, so we can use those donations to alleviate travel expenses for us. However, we will not stop here. We are also trying to get another restaurant, Convivio, to help us raise money; nothing is official yet, but the owner of Convivio said he is willing to help us. We are also looking to get grants from other places, but again, nothing is finalized yet. We did get an offer from CookMedical, so we are going through that process right now. If you are like our community members and would like to help us, please go to https://www.gofundme.com/carmelinventeam and donate. Every cent counts!
If you would like to see team updates, we are continuing to post on social media. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
