
Pebble Seizure Detect - ingve
https://github.com/PebbleSeizureDetect/PebbleSeizureDetect
======
vvanders
Always warms my heart to see technology re-used in interesting ways that can
help people with a medical condition.

Way back(~2004) I was working for UPS. One of our package loaders had a
BlackBerry, back when only suits had them. He was mute and since he couldn't
speak he used the BB for _all_ of his communication. Here I was just geeking
out over smartphone tech(Kyocera 7135, woo!) and he was able to have his whole
life changed in a fundamental way with tech that was conceived for business
productivity.

~~~
eli
I once wrote an article about how the Danger's Hiptop phone (aka T-Mobile
Sidekick) was revolutionary for the deaf. Pretty sure it was the first cell
phone that interfaced directly with the TTY network from the phone keypad. It
was a pretty neat little device actually. Ahead of its time in many ways.

~~~
wickawic
I used to work at Subway ~10 years ago and a deaf couple would always come in
and order with their sidekicks. They would even tell us jokes! Thanks for
digging up that memory for me :)

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TeMPOraL
Absolutely great; thanks 'ingve for posting it.

One thing that IMO should be modified is the dependency on Twilio. I don't
know how it is in the US, but Android users in Europe should not need an
Internet connection for sending text messages - the phone is capable of doing
it by itself. I think it's more common to be without Internet access but with
mobile service than the other way around.

EDIT: submitted the suggestion as a GitHub issue.

~~~
tenken
God if i was the author i'd just say "Patches/Pushes welcome."

He made it a way that works for his needs -- if you think it should work
otherwise; feel free to contribute. Suggestions are a dime a dozen 'round
these parts.

~~~
x1798DE
Suggestions without patches are extremely useful when someone gives you a use
case that may be common but which you wouldn't have thought about because it's
outside your own personal work flow.

~~~
noir_lord
Software I write for customers always has a "Suggest a Feature" button
somewhere on the primary nav.

Some of the stuff suggested is ridiculous or impossible but sometimes they
suggest stuff that in hindsight would have been blindingly obvious but _I 'm
not the end user_ no matter how hard I try to put myself in their shoes.

------
NamTaf
My partner died 3 months ago, presumably due to complications of a tonic-
clonic seizure. She was in the room next to me with a door closed because she
was feeling unwell with a headache for the two days prior and so was dozing in
bed. I was either doing the vacuuming or playing a video game at the time.
This technology may have allowed me to save her as I would've seen/felt the
text message and been able to provide first aid to her immediately.

For those of us who have to live with a loved one who suffers seizures, thank
you to the author for making this and thank you ingve for sharing it.
Hopefully it can avert a tragedy like mine for someone else in the future.

------
jon-wood
One thing I really liked here was the run through of failure modes in the
readme, its refreshing to see the limitations of some software listed up front
rather than glossed over.

------
MrZongle2
As a father of a child with epilepsy* and who has observed _many_ tonic-clonic
seizures, I'm horrified by the thought of being an independent adult who would
have to deal with them on a regular basis. So I can't upvote this enough; I
feel as if epilepsy is one of the red-headed stepchildren in the age of AIDS
awareness and pink-colored campaigns everywhere.

Kudos. This is awesome.

* More specifically, Myoclonic Astatic Epilepsy (MAE), which he appears to have been lucky enough to have outgrown, though I don't know if saying he "had" epilepsy (past tense) is accurate (or even relevant to the discussion).

------
etjossem
Although my epilepsy is well-controlled, a breakthrough seizure is still a
possibility. An app like this could really help me out of a tough spot. Cheers
to you for building it!

For many patients, it's important to record how long their seizures last - to
escalate/911 if needed, and also after the fact to aid diagnosis and
treatment. I could see this app playing a role there too. After the event, the
Pebble might prompt the wearer/responder whether to log it as a seizure, which
would (mostly) automate the seizure log recommended by Epilepsy Society.

------
MrSourz
It's interesting to me that I've now seen two projects for Pebble built around
this concept.[1] I think this is in part due to the approachability of
developing on Pebble's platform. They've got a really great cloud IDE [2]

[1] now on iPhone too [http://neutun.com/](http://neutun.com/) [2]
[https://cloudpebble.net/](https://cloudpebble.net/)

~~~
lucaspiller
Cloud IDEs are a great idea for embedded devices. A friend recently showed me
the IDE for Particle (formerly Spark) [0]. It definitely beats having to
figure out which compiler to use, install drivers, get the right connector and
get everything working together.

[0] [https://www.particle.io/prototype#particle-
build](https://www.particle.io/prototype#particle-build)

------
neves
Congratulations!!! It can't see a better use of technology and open source
than this one. I'm really touched.

------
PbblSzrDtct
Hi all! I am the author of this software. I didn't submit this to Hacker News
-- someone else must have! Thank you, whoever you are. I'll try to answer the
other questions in the thread now.

~~~
beeboop
This is an awesome project. Thanks for making it. My small suggestion (though
it's a big task) would be to allow anonymous data collection when there's a
seizure. Getting the sensor data on real seizures I am sure would help a lot
in improving detection.

~~~
PbblSzrDtct
That is a very good suggestion! Would be happy to accept a patch if you'd like
to code it :D

------
wyldfire
This is pretty cool, good job!

    
    
        // A sqrt function I got from the web that 
        uses integers only (since Pebble emulates floating point math)" [1]
    

Pebble has a soft-float implementation? So is this integer sqrt approximation
is faster than the soft-float one?

[1]
[https://github.com/PebbleSeizureDetect/PebbleSeizureDetect/b...](https://github.com/PebbleSeizureDetect/PebbleSeizureDetect/blob/f7e68491de88ed29571ce47805e528dc21d2cfb6/main.c#L347)

~~~
devbent
I've used both, integer square root is typically much faster than floating
point emulation.

Really almost anything is faster than FP emulation.

------
gchorba
Awesome work, best write up of this type of project I have seen yet. But its
been done before:
[https://github.com/OpenSeizureDetector/OpenSeizureDetector](https://github.com/OpenSeizureDetector/OpenSeizureDetector)

~~~
PbblSzrDtct
Nice! This must not have been released prior to November of last year when I
first authored my software. I searched around but couldn't find anything
viable at the time, so I had to make my own.

------
muglug
This is amazing, and very important – this year I lost a friend to a seizure
that might not have been fatal had they been found sooner.

------
whyleyc
Thanks for putting this out there - looks fantastic for hackers like me with
partners who suffer from epilepsy.

If you are interested in wearable tech and epilepsy you should also check out
the "Embrace Watch" [1] - It measures electrical conductivity across the skin
of a person wearing the watch and is able to use that as a proxy for
heightened electrical activity within the brain (which can be indicative of a
tonic-clonic seizure). It pairs with phones to send SMS messages to nominated
contacts as alerts.

It was developed out of MIT and is now being commercialized. I'm currently
waiting to take delivery of this watch (from an IndieGoGo campaign last year),
so can't speak to its effectiveness but I have high hopes, particularly since
it doesn't just rely on motion. Motion detection is helpful, but by then it is
too late for the person having a seizure as they have no warning to make
themselves safe.

[1] [https://www.empatica.com/embrace-watch-epilepsy-
monitor](https://www.empatica.com/embrace-watch-epilepsy-monitor)

~~~
PbblSzrDtct
Yes, I am aware of this and my wife and I also backed the IndieGoGo. I hope it
works as well as advertised! In the meantime, Pebble Seizure Detect is a
decent stopgap measure. Empatica hadn't even been announced, when I first
authored this software.

------
codeulike
This is great.

There are commercial devices that work along similar lines, such as
[http://smart-monitor.com](http://smart-monitor.com) which is bought as a $20
per month subscription. But something open running on a platform like pebble
is much more interesting.

~~~
TeMPOraL
This was supposed to be a comment expressing my fear of subscription-model
hardware, but I looked at the site and - what the hell, take a look at [0] -
aren't they just rebranding Pebbles? Most of the watches look very much like
Pebble Time, and this one[1] is literally Pebble Classic (you can even see the
standard Pebble status bar).

"Made by Smart Monitor, the SmartWatch is a patented, intelligent motion
detecting and alerting wristwatch."

Yeah, right.

EDIT: The watch names suggest it too[2]. Also note that they're basically
charging 50% more for the watch itself than the official Pebble shop, and that
is before the activation fee and monthly subscription fee.

EDIT2: The more I search, the more I'm confused about them. They look legit,
and apparently[3] they even had their own smartwatch prototype before moving
to Pebble. But there's no mention of "Pebble" on their site, or in any
materials related to them that I can find. Moreover, this interview[4] says
they're planning to get this (presumably Pebble version) FDA-certified, which
makes me wonder - aren't they going to find themselves in competition with
Pebble itself? Ironically, both them and Pebble seem to be cooperating with
Stanford[5][6].

Oh, and did I mention they claim to have a trademark on the word "smartwatch"
itself?

[0] - [http://smart-monitor.com/smartwatch/about-smartwatch/](http://smart-
monitor.com/smartwatch/about-smartwatch/)

[1] - [http://smart-monitor.com/wp-content/gallery/gallery1/PW-
watc...](http://smart-monitor.com/wp-content/gallery/gallery1/PW-watch-
thumb-1B.jpg)

[2] - [http://smart-monitor.com/buy-now/](http://smart-monitor.com/buy-now/)

[3] -
[https://plus.google.com/+DanievanderMerwe/posts/BiNUbBgpi8B](https://plus.google.com/+DanievanderMerwe/posts/BiNUbBgpi8B)

[4] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcu8Ts9MFtY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcu8Ts9MFtY)

[5] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=rc...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=rcu8Ts9MFtY#t=642)

[6] -
[https://blog.getpebble.com/2015/12/15/health/](https://blog.getpebble.com/2015/12/15/health/)

~~~
codeulike
Interesting. I suppose its possible they made a deal with pebble. These things
are never going to be sold en-masse, so why wouldn't pebble agree if someone
came to them with a neat medical application.

------
deelowe
Hrmm... Real time health monitoring could finally be the truly compelling
reason to wear smart watches.

~~~
TeMPOraL
We need to wait 'till most manufacturers get bored with the current fitness
frenzy and start building something meaningful. Or maybe independent app
developers like the author of this one will beat them to it.

~~~
rconti
Maybe it's because fitness is a good 'safer' arena to enter and test sensors
and algorithms before jumping straight into medical devices.. especially
considering how the FDA feels about such devices.

------
bucma
This is really cool.

My wife died of a tonic-colonic seizure 11 years ago. Something like this
might have saved her.

------
noir_lord
My previous partner used to suffer seizures of this type, this would have been
_incredible_ as often the only way I knew she'd had a seizure would be if she
text me _after_ she'd recovered, that was a terrifying thing considering they
could hit at any time and any where.

------
n00b101
How is development/testing done for this software? Is there a test data set of
seizures to test against?

~~~
TeMPOraL
As sad as it may be, it seems from the README that the author was testing it
on his wife, who suffers from those seizures.

Google returns several papers about detecting seizures with wearable
accelerometers, but I haven't been able to find an openly available dataset.
It would be great if there was one.

~~~
PbblSzrDtct
You are correct. I am aware of no public data set. I test it by watching
YouTube videos (people often post videos of their seizures) and attempting to
mimick the arm motions I see. Crude, for sure, but it's the best I can do.

------
chaqke
I've heard several mentions of this over the years as one of the better use
cases for devices. Sometimes it takes having a problem really close to your
life to drive that devotion - I'm glad someone spent the time and effort to
solving this.

