Every year, interns spending their summers at Texas Instruments are challenged to test their creativity, technical prowess and might in a competitive design challenge based on TI technology. This year, we are challenging our interns to create a solution based on a TI MCU LaunchPad™ or the BeagleBone Black. Got Your Back is a project by #creaTIviteam that won the popular vote in the challenge based on votes from TI applications and systems engineers.
Written by: Jason He and Dana Abusalah
The first thing we learned at TI’s intern orientation was pretty surprising: there is a wrong way to sit.
With the new STEM education push and tech jobs becoming more and more lucrative, more people are entering jobs where they spend the majority of their time sitting. Therefore, for our entry, we created Got Your Back, your new ergonomics accountability buddy.
Got Your Back is centered around the new MSP432P401R LaunchPad, and it uses Seeed Studio’s Grove BoosterPack and Ultrasonic Ranger sensors to detect healthy posture. Rather than constantly monitoring, it takes advantage of the MSP432’s ultra-low-power capabilities and sleeps most of the time, only waking up to check your posture once every five minutes. This makes it like a friend, kindly checking up on you, rather than annoyingly distracting you. The device will also remind you to stand up once every thirty minutes and buzz if you try to stay seated.
With the SimpleLink™ WiFi® CC3100 BoosterPack, we connected our device to IBM Bluemix’s NodeRED, so we could incorporate user customization and more features. Users can configure their device to check at various intervals. We also integrated Got Your Back with Twitter, so your friends on social media can remind you if your posture is poor. Finally, users can click a button to email themselves their daily sitting report, so they can keep track of their health and progress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QmwObYJHNM
The process of developing the product from scratch was challenging. We had multiple prototypes and trials before reaching a successful model, but the knowledge we gained made the experience worth it.
For more information, you can visit: hackster.io/creativiteam/got-your-back.
