Nick Bild
Newrons
Give your memory a boost with Newrons.
Higher resolution video in Media section below.
Newrons are smart glasses that offer a gentle memory assist by flashing a light in the wearer's peripheral vision when they are in the vicinity of an object associated with an event on their calendar. For example, if the user has "Take Medicine" on their calendar at 2:00PM, and they are near a pill bottle around that time, a light on the glasses will flash to jog the wearer's memory.
This offers the advantage of reminding the wearer of something they need to do exactly when it is convenient to do so. Smartphone notifications can often be dismissed and forgotten because they give an alert at a time when they are inconvenient or impossible to immediately act on. It is also completely passive and doesn't require one to have their phone at hand.
How It Works
A pair of glasses is fitted with a JeVois A33 Smart Machine Vision Camera, an Arduino Nano 33 IoT, an Adafruit PCF8523 Real Time Clock, and a 5050 RGB LED. Power is supplied by a 5V battery pack.
The JeVois is configured to run a TensorFlow deep convolutional neural network trained on the ImageNet dataset for object detection. Real-time information about detected objects is transmitted via the 4-pin serial interface to the Arduino.
The Arduino connects via WiFi to the Google Calendar API and retrieves events for the current day using information from the real time clock. When an object is detected that is associated with a calendar event, within a specified window of time around that event, an LED is pulsed. Arduino Code
Media
See it in action: YouTube
Top view: 
Front view: 
Front left view: 
Front left angle view: 
Side angle view: 
Circuit Diagram
Bill of Materials
- JeVois A33 Smart Machine Vision Camera
- Arduino Nano 33 IoT
- Adafruit PCF8523 Real Time Clock
- 5050 RGB LED
- 5V battery pack
- Glasses or sunglasses
About the Author
peter ward
M. Bindhammer
mariz92
boardz
I like the idea a lot. I use that technique quite often when I need to remember to do something in the future - I'll look for an object that I know I'll see when the time comes, and convince myself that I'll remember to do the task when I see it. Works most of the time ;-)
I wonder if the next step would be an AR setup, where a live display of what you're looking at has an outline around the reminder object. Much more difficult than flashing an LED, of course, but it'd be really cool.