ALLAN JAMES EDGAR

I, along with a couple of friends, decided to participate in a PCH Hackathon at the Google Campus in London. We went without a project, keen to jump in and help another team. The project we joined was a biometric tracking system for horses. We chose this because of my previous experience with Electromyographic Techniques and familiarity with photoplethysmography. My friend’s also had exhaustive experience with wireless comms and microcontrollers.

The first problem we tackled was the system architecture, particularly the data flow. We decided what crucial data that would be transmitted from the units. Then we optimised the comms to minimise the size and power consumption of the radios. We landed on a mesh network solution so that the monitors didn’t have to be in constant p2p contact with the base unit. This allowed the data to be routed via neigh-bouring units (pun intended) and propagate back to base station. We also designed a memory state for the data to be stored if connection is completely severed for a period of time. We also implemented an alerting system if the base station got anomolous readings or if connectivity to a unit had been lost for a significant period of time.

Once we had nailed down the system architecture I started working on the two subsystems that best suited my skillsets. The first of these was prototyping the biometric sensors and data filtering algorithms. We dismantled a Polar heart rate monitor and hooked it up to an arduino and with the raw data I wrote an program that filtered noise and added automatic gain control. After this the data was boiled it down into human readable and packetisable data to be piped into my friends message cueing protocol.

My next task was to design and 3D Print a ruggedized box to fit the sensors, gps module, comms and microcontroller. In my previous dealings with 3D Printing I had gained a solid grasp on creating complex geometries in Google Sketchup. What I hadn't done before was use dual extrusion, which the availble printers had. The plan was to create a rigid core to protect with a flexible outer layer to protect from any blows that such a device would experience being strapped to the side of a horse. we also added a flexible skirt to make it contour conforming and a more comfortable fit when attached.

This experience was crazy fun but exhausting. It was also a crash course in the ability to rapidly integrate yourself into a new team and produce results. I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in this sort of thing. It is an experience like nothing you could hope to get in a traditional workplace.