ES triggered by muscle activation

Today, I tried to establish a system which can detect muscle activities and then trigger an electrical stimulation to help muscle contraction. One reason that I did this project is learning to control DAQ card by labview. The other is that I saw some functional electrical stimulation applications and tried to build a proto type system by myself.

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1. The DS7 Digitimer is the electrical stimulation, here is the information: http://www.digitimer.com/pdf/digitimes/Digitimes%202009.pdf

2. The Electrogoniometer is to measure my elbow angle.

3. NI USB 6009 is a data acquisition card which can acquire analog inputs and send digital outputs.

4. The Logitech Webcam is used to record videos.

5. The BNC line is used to connect the trigger of DS7 Digitimer.

The concept of my program is pretty simple. When detecting muscle activation which is over a certain level, the DAQ card sends one digital signal to DS7 digitimer which stimulates muscle.

There is a problem that I do not have any amplifier to record the EMG. I use the sound card of my computer because a sound card is also a kind of DAQ card which can amplify sound signals and records them.

Here is my GUI of labview program. You can see I measured the EMG and joint angle. It also record the video. I can change the threshold which means the level of EMG signals need to over the setting level which trigger the ES.

Here is one thing that I should mention that I did not calibrate the voltage of EMG and the time scale. However, you can understand how it works on below movie.

It is a big sacrifice for me because the temperature is quite low today and I was naked when doing the project.

Control a Servo by a Mouse via python and arduino

After I watched this interesting movie, I tried to do it by using python. However, I am a novel of python and arduino, so I spent lots of time to find the reference.



In python, I need:
1. win32gui module: to get the mouse position
2. pySerial module: to send the data to arduino

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Here is my python code


import win32gui
import time
import serial

ser = serial.Serial(4)

while (True):
x,y = win32gui.GetCursorPos()
time.sleep(0.2)
pos=int(179*x/1599)
ser.write(chr(pos))
print x,y



And my code in arduino


#include

Servo myservo;
int val;

void setup(){
myservo.attach(9);
Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop(){
if(Serial.available()){
val=Serial.read();
myservo.write(val);
delay(15);
}
}


My New Toy

Recently,I bought the other kind of microcontroller called Arduino. Before this one, I've played Basic Stamp in my lab, but just know a little simple concept. Because Arduino is cheaper than Basic stamp, I bought it for myself and hope I can learn some knowledge about electricity or autocontrol. However, although I have great interest of it, I suppose to study my TOEFL test first because the test date is coming~~~~ T.T

Get the signal when pressing mouse left key

A Few weeks ago, I had a project which I need to synchronize two data acquisition system. One is recording force, the other is EMG data. Originally, I hope the force acquisition system can send the analog output to the EMG system, so I can record both data on EMG system. However, the force recording system is too difficult to send the analog output because the manufacture close all the lines in the box.

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Another way coming in my mind is to use a analog signal sending to both system. However, as I mentioned before, the force recording system closes all the lines in the box and I can't open it. I was forced to think another solution. Finally, I come up with sending a signal by the mouse when pressing the start of the force recording system so my EMG system can record the time of the beginning of force recording.

However, I know nothing about printed circuit board. I relied on the spirit of try and error to find the two position which can generate 5 voltage when pressing the mouse left key and then wield it.

I know it is nothing for many people, but for me, it's a good experience to do the thing that I have never done before although I accomplished it by try and error.

Is CPU with high temperature??!!

Recently, my notebook always shuts down when pressing power. Even the system does not enter bios, the computer shuts down automatically. I tried to find some information today, and one possibility is the self-protection mechanism of CPU.





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So, I tried to dismantle the fan and turn on my computer. Then, I found out that the temperature of CPU is so hot and my computer shut down immediately. I observed the fan carefully and found out that there is a big dirty .... cotton??(I don't know how to call it.) You can see in the picture. I know it's very disgusting. However, the problem still exists after I clean the fan.... but the times which the computer shuts down when turning on are less than before and the system seems quicker and more stable. Maybe I will buy a thermal compound and see whether the situation gets better or not.