Category Archives: Miranda’s Blog

These past few weeks we have posted all the fliers and I am now working on creating an enclosure for the bend sensor so that the wires will not be exposed to the user.

We posted the fliers all around campus and have heard back from one potential participant! We are hoping to do the study in 1-2 weeks.

In the mean time, we are readjusting a part of the circuit so that the power switch for the circuit is exposed so that the user can easily turn the device on an off. I am also working on the bend …

We have been working on creating a second prototype in case the first one has technical problems during the study. With two prototypes, we can switch between the two when we need to fix one of them. We have the second enclosure mostly finished, but we are still working on the circuit.

This prototype has been a lot easier to create because of what we have learned from making the first prototype. Also we are using a border material that is easier to sew onto the neoprene which expedites the process.

In other news, we also got IRB approval! We …

I am posting a bit earlier this week because of the July 4th holiday. These past two weeks have been quite busy. We are excited at the progress we have made. Swamy, our PhD advisor had created a circuit for the EL wire panel. I worked largely on designing and creating the physical knee enclosure so that it could be integrated with the technology. Below are two views of our finished first prototype.

I also created components for each of the electrical components hidden beneath the EL panel. The panel and circuit are shown below.

The next steps involve creating a second …

These past two weeks, we have been working on the prototype. The circuit is finished and we have sewed the EL wire onto the panel.

At the beginning of the two week period, we had several conversations discussing how we could make the leg enclosure adjustable with the integration of the electronics and requirements of the sensor. After testing both the bend and flex sensor in several positions, the data concluded that the bend sensor placed on the back of the leg would be most reliable. The placement of the sensor at the back on the leg posed some questions …

This week I have been working on the prototype. I realized that our older design did not fit the leg as well as it could have, so I experimented with paper to create a design that is shaped like the leg. Since our goal is to have a prototype by the end of June, I wanted to create paper prototype designs of the knee enclosure since paper is easier to manipulate and less expensive than neoprene.

Since we want to create a sleek design, I created a prototype with a 4.5″ x 4.5″ panel for the EL wire.

This prototype …

I have not posted reccently because I was on a Maymester study abroad trip to Beijing. I am back in the lab now and am working on the prototype.

We decided to taper the leg enclosure where the material adjusts to fit snuggly to the leg. This way, we can have a smaller buckle. We have created the buckles through a 3D printer. The circuit is also almost ready. Our goal is to have a prototype done by the end of the month and studies in July.

Miranda

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I have been focusing mainly on construction of the prototype these past weeks. We constructed a plastic buckle from a 3D printer. It looks like a double loop slider buckle. It is four inches long and can be used with the lower leg enclosure. We tested the buckle and it works well. So we will construct a 6 inch buckle for the upper leg as well. The buckle is shaped like the image below, but we used plastic so that it would not be as cold against the skin of the patient.

This image was taken from http://www.oandp.com/.

I have …

These past two weeks I have been working on a new iteration of the leg enclosure. When meeting with Swamy, I realized that we were looking at the leg enclosure through the incorrect mindset. We were basing our leg enclosure design off of different knee braces that can be found in convenience stores like Walgreens. However, I realized that the purpose of those knee braces are to restrict movement, not allow it. We realized that we needed to redesign our leg enclosure to something that allows movement. Below is a brief sketch of the new iteration.

Instead of using a …

We have been working on the design these past few weeks and making the EL wire straighter. We are trying to use shrink wrap to see if it will straighten the wiring.

I am meeting with our PhD advisor this week to work on the design. We are integrating each part of the design and attaching it to an already created knee enclosure so that we will be able to test more data quickly.

Last week was spring break so we had a slight pause with the research. We will be starting up again this week. After I make the EL …

These past two weeks, we have really been focusing on and working on finishing our Grace Hopper paper. Initially, we wrote a draft of the paper. We had to cut it down a lot because of the page requirements. We met with our PhD student to edit it first. We also uploaded it as a Google Doc so other students in our lab could read it. We then finalized a draft with our PhD student Swamy and sent it off to our professor for editing. After implementing her edits, we submitted the paper into the system. Hopefully, it will be …