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​ Eyedrivomatic News!!

A project log for Eye Controlled Wheelchair!

Open source system to drive powerchairs by eye movement alone - allowing independent mobility when use of a person's hands isn't an option.

patrick-joycePatrick Joyce 03/03/2016 at 11:560 Comments
I've been very lazy since the end of last years Hackaday Prize competition. However, over the last month i've pulled myself together, and got back on the horse, so to speak. By the end of the competition we'd put everything up on github, thingiverse and instructables. All the files necessary to build your own eyedrivomatic system. But it wasn't as good as we wanted. The hardware was ok, but the software had two issues. It was tricky to set up, and only worked in conjunction with a commercial software package called Grid2.

The tricky setup issue was due to the com port number that a pc assigns to an arduino (like the one in the brain box ). The processing app for eyedrivomatic needs to know that number. Each user had to discover his own com port number, and manually alter the code for the app. Simple for a geek. Hard indeed for a normal person – daunting even.
That problem has now disappeared, thanks to our brand new Eyedrivomatic Port Finder app. Written by W. A. Smith, and modified by Steve Thomas, port finder finds out your com port number, and stores it in a config file on your pc – ready for the main eyedrivomatic app to use.
Its brilliantly simple. You run port finder once only, and then the main eyedrivomatic app runs perfectly. Simple.
The new port finder app is up our Github repository, along with the modified main eyedrivomatic app.
Its just the Grid2 issue to deal with now. Give me a few more weeks, and eyedrivomatic will work on any pc, with or without Grid2, simply!

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