Description
Meet Kayden, a local 15yr old young man and close family friend, who was born with no left forearm and hand.
The National Health Service (NHS) is an amazing service in the UK, however their prosthetic provision is both basic and expensive (to the NHS).
Surely with modern technology we can not only improve the lives of young people like Kayden but also demonstrate how we can do it more cost effectively than current options.
This talk details how I set about building on the wonderful work of the OpenBionics team to provide Kayden with an alternative to the NHS prosthesis.
We'll discuss:

- How 3D printing of parts for the hand can be much more effective (cost and function) than fibre glass moulds

- Using home 3D printing we can create a viable articulated hand

- Using off the shelf commodity IoT boards from Adafruit can be used to program the hand (and how this is more viable than alternative approaches) but more recently in the project moving to the new WildernessLabs F7 board so that the whole project in DotNet.

- Creating a Xamarin application to connect via Bluetooth and provide customisation and control options for the hand and the challenges of UI design for those with accessibility issues.

- How this option can reduce the costs from £000's to several hundred £s and is being done as an Open Source project which will hopefully lead to designs and kits being available for others around the world to build their own.
Attendees will learn about and see demos of:

- The 3D printed hand and related components
- Programming of the IoT board and sensors (In DotNet and C#)
- Creation of the Xamarin application to customise the hand.
- Bluetooth connection options.

Please note: Kayden and his family have given express permission to use his name and images for this talk.