D-Lab: Health Project Update: Team Ambulance

In D-Lab yesterday, we channeled our inner 3-year olds and demolished (gently) a disposable camera. What we found was a beautifully exquisite piece of circuitry with a pretty big capacitor to charge and discharge the voltage from a double A battery. Though Michael got shocked a couple of times in the process, we found out that once the battery was in place, the capacitor was charging continually. When we connected a wire from the capacitor to a metal piece on the circuitry, the capacitor discharged and there was a resulting flash from the light attached to the circuit board.

Our goal for tonight is to attach a resistor to the capacitor so that it will cause the capacitor to charge slowly and reduce the hazard of shocking anybody. Michael and Krithika were able to meet with one of the 6.022 professors today afternoon (more to be posted later!), so we’re going to see if we can start working on the coding/sensory aspect of our defib.

What we’ve completed so far:

1. Picking apart a disposable camera, isolating the circuit, and making the capacitor discharge to create a flash! :)

2. Consulting professors on how exactly we’re going to gather data from a person and how to analyze that data to create graphs of a patient’s signals.

~ Divya

{Happiness-G}