Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
40 Precision Dumbbell Assistant
Cole Trautman
Ellie Beck
Ronit Kumar
Douglas Yu design_document1.pdf
final_paper1.pdf
presentation1.pptx
proposal1.pdf
proposal2.pdf
video
# Team Members
- Cole Trautman (colept2)
- Ronit Kumar (ronitk2)
- Ellie Beck (elliana2)

# Problem

Many gym goers struggle to maintain proper form during their workouts with dumbbells, which is why they rely heavily on exercise machines. However, if you are trying to construct an at-home gym, it is not feasible to order too many machines. Hence, there should be a way to help people maintain proper form even when they just use dumbbells. To start simple, we will first make our design compatible with bicep curls. We will add more exercises depending on time constraints.

# Solution

Our design will use 3 6-axis (accelerometer and gyroscope) IMU sensors on each arm to calculate the position of each arm and ensure that the user is performing the exercise correctly. There will be two small sensor boards located on the lower arm and shoulder, and a larger main board with another sensor on the upper arm. There will also be a battery that will be attached to the user, most likely on the upper arm or back. There will be a total of 5 subsystems in this design: sensing, processing, wireless communication, feedback, and power

# Solution Components

## Sensing

The sensing subsystem consists of 6 total LSM6DSMTR 6-axis IMUs, 3 for each arm. Each IMU will be on its own board, and connected to the processor via SPI. As mentioned before, the sensors will be located on the lower and upper arm, as well as the shoulder, which should allow us to accurately track the entire arm and dumbbell. The two small sensor boards will be connected to the main board with some kind of wire harness for power and SPI.

## Processing

The processing subsystem contains the two ESP32 processors. These were chosen because of their wireless capabilities, which we will get to later. Each processor will initialize its three sensors and then read in the sensor data and make sure that they are within the threshold necessary to perform the exercise correctly.

## Wireless Communication

This subsystem will handle the communication between the two ESP32 processors, as well as to the user’s phone so that they can see feedback via the feedback subsystem. We plan to use BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy), but if we run into problems with that ESP32 also should support WiFi.

## Feedback

This subsystem will handle the audible and visual feedback needed to let the user know whether they are doing the exercise correctly or not. We plan to have a buzzer on each main board to provide audible feedback, and a phone app to provide visual feedback. We want to at least list data regarding the number of curls, speed of workout, and angle of movements. Based on the data, it will compile a report that describes the accuracy of the user's form. If we can make some sort of graphic that displays where the movement was incorrect that would be incredibly helpful, although implementing this feature seems like it would be very time consuming.

## Power

Power will come from two 3.7V Li-ion battery packs, one on each arm. We plan to have these near the main board that attaches to the upper arm, but if it is too heavy it could be located elsewhere. This subsystem will also contain the circuitry needed to convert the voltage down to the voltage needed by the processor and sensors if needed.

# Criterion For Success

Our device needs to be accurate in motion and form analysis. To test this goal, we should be able to move our arms at the same distance and angle that we determine from our research of an online fitness expert and the feedback should be positive. We will also need to test each of our sensors individually to ensure that the accelerometer and gyroscope are providing accurate data based on our movements.

We also need to provide real time feedback to the user for improper form. To test this goal, we will purposely use improper form and the buzzer should sound to alert the user.

Our device should also allow the user to do proper movements. When we connect the sensors and ESP32 microcontroller, we will have to make sure that we don’t have overly rigid connections that prevent the user from moving their body parts naturally.

Recovery-Monitoring Knee Brace

Dong Hyun Lee, Jong Yoon Lee, Dennis Ryu

Featured Project

Problem:

Thanks to modern technology, it is easy to encounter a wide variety of wearable fitness devices such as Fitbit and Apple Watch in the market. Such devices are designed for average consumers who wish to track their lifestyle by counting steps or measuring heartbeats. However, it is rare to find a product for the actual patients who require both the real-time monitoring of a wearable device and the hard protection of a brace.

Personally, one of our teammates ruptured his front knee ACL and received reconstruction surgery a few years ago. After ACL surgery, it is common to wear a knee brace for about two to three months for protection from outside impacts, fast recovery, and restriction of movement. For a patient who is situated in rehabilitation after surgery, knee protection is an imperative recovery stage, but is often overlooked. One cannot deny that such a brace is also cumbersome to put on in the first place.

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Solution:

Our group aims to make a wearable device for people who require a knee brace by adding a health monitoring system onto an existing knee brace. The fundamental purpose is to protect the knee, but by adding a monitoring system we want to provide data and a platform for both doctor and patients so they can easily check the current status/progress of the injury.

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Audience:

1) Average person with leg problems

2) Athletes with leg injuries

3) Elderly people with discomforts

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Equipment:

Temperature sensors : perhaps in the form of electrodes, they will be used to measure the temperature of the swelling of the knee, which will indicate if recovery is going smoothly.

Pressure sensors : they will be calibrated such that a certain threshold of force must be applied by the brace to the leg. A snug fit is required for the brace to fulfill its job.

EMG circuit : we plan on constructing an EMG circuit based on op-amps, resistors, and capacitors. This will be the circuit that is intended for doctors, as it will detect muscle movement.

Development board: our main board will transmit the data from each of the sensors to a mobile interface via. Bluetooth. The user will be notified when the pressure sensors are not tight enough. For our purposes, the battery on the development will suffice, and we will not need additional dry cells.

The data will be transmitted to a mobile system, where it would also remind the user to wear the brace if taken off. To make sure the brace has a secure enough fit, pressure sensors will be calibrated to determine accordingly. We want to emphasize the hardware circuits that will be supplemented onto the leg brace.

We want to emphasize on the hardware circuit portion this brace contains. We have tested the temperature and pressure resistors on a breadboard by soldering them to resistors, and confirmed they work as intended by checking with a multimeter.

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