[Vanhackspace] Help with C-code/Arduino project

[starrant at telus.net]

Hello Everyone,

I'm involved in a student project to make a communication device for ALS (Lou 
Gehrig's disease) patients.   The finished project will be entered into an 
annual competition held by the ALS society.   It is also part of a "capstone 
project" course at BCIT for the three students involved:  myself and two fellow 
students in the Biomedical Engineering program, Julie and Brad.   We have done a 
lot of research with patients and caregivers on the specific needs of this 
patient group and targeted our project to be a prototype of a robust, 
inexpensive, simple alternative to existing "assistive communication" devices on 
the market.  We have partly based our device on two previous BCIT student 
projects that were entered in last year's ALS society contest, one of which won 
the $1000 "innovation" award.

The device is a microcontroller (atmega/Arduino) based device that provides a 
user interface which allows users with severe physical disabilities (i.e., can 
only activate a customized switch) to input and display messages, or play pre-
recorded voice messages.   Text input is achieved with a "scanning" matrix of 64 
LED's that backlight the letters for display, and output is on a 4X20 LCD 
display;  voice message selection is a similar "scan" of message choices on the 
LCD, with output of .WAV files stored on an SD card via an Arduino Wave Shield 
and speaker.  Several other features including audible alarm, user-configurable 
scan speed and other settings, sleep mode, output to RS232 printer, etc. are 
also on the wish list.  The hardware prototype is well-defined and nearing 
completion.   We have a "test-rig" that we are using to develop the code.
The school term only has 5 midterm-and-finals-filled weeks left however, and the  
three of us are more "hardware oriented" and finding the programming daunting.  
Our code "sorta works" but is  clumsy, buggy, and has yet to include many of the 
"wish list" features.

We are looking for a volunteer:
1.)    Someone who is ideally an excellent C-code writer and familiar with the 
Arduino, LCD displays, Wave shield, etc., to work with Julie (our best 
programmer) to get the basic functional code working well and looking good, then 
adding some of the other "wish list" functions.  This might be quite a few hours 
of work, or it might be something a professional programmer finds trivial, we 
really don't know....

2.)  Someone (maybe the same person, or not) to help us hack an RS232 thermal 
printer so that the user has the option of outputing hard-copy that they have 
entered via our device.

Why you may be interested in helping:

-It's a good cause, helping severely handicapped people to communicate.
-It's an interesting project, with lots of blinky lights and sounds.
-There is the potential to win a prize up to $5000.   This would be shared 
equally among all the group members.
-Your name would be included as a project member for the competition, you can 
list it on your resume etc.
-Did I mention Beer? Lots of Beer.

If you are interested, please contact me and describe your credentials, 
experience, time availability, and the reasons you are interested.   Part 1 
above would ideally start *now* and end by the end of March, early April at the 
latest.   Part 2 is optional, and could take place during April right up to the 
competition.

Stephen Tarrant
starrant at telus.net
604-301-0214