Inspiration
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on people's mental health. Despite the growing awareness of mental health issues, the problem is still very prominent, especially in academic environments, where we observe students around us struggling to cope with high stress on a daily basis.
Through our personal experiences, we have witnessed music's potential to uplift individuals when they are feeling down. After doing some research, we learned that certain frequencies have been scientifically proven to help cope with mental disorders such as anxiety attacks.
With this knowledge, we embarked on a mission to leverage our love for music and technology to enhance the lives of our people struggling with mental disorders, culminating in the development of Wauve.
What it does
Wauve is an innovative use of technology to support mental health. By using an Arduino to transmit sound at a specific frequency, our project aims to soothe people with anxiety and other mental disorders. This has the potential to be a powerful tool for those who struggle with these conditions, as research has shown that certain frequencies can have a calming effect on the nervous system. By utilizing this technology, we offer a non-invasive and accessible way to support mental health. With further development and research, our project has the potential to make a real difference in the lives of many people.
How we built it
The user measures their heart rate using the oximeter and if the readings suggest that they are encountering an anxiety attack, an audible sound resonating at 432Hz is triggered.
In order to produce the sound, the Python script uses the wave library to read in an audio file in WAV format, and then sends the audio data to the Arduino over the serial port using the serial module.
We also calculate a delay time based on the audio file's sample rate to ensure that the audio is played at the correct speed. The Arduino code receives the audio data and plays it through the speaker connected to the SPEAKER_PIN pin.
Challenges we ran into
We initially wanted to integrate the blood pressure and heart rate sensors with the Arduino but we did not have the necessary hardware to implement this idea, thus why we included this stage in our next steps. Moreover, a few hours into the hackathon, the speaker we were using to transmit the frequency broke due to poor soldering. In turn, we were forced to borrow a buzzer from another group which still transmitted the frequency but not at the same quality we had hoped for.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
The first thing that we can be proud of is that we have taken an extremely positive step in the right direction toward solving such a prevalent issue in modern society. Our team worked in a cohesive manner, with few conflicts, resulting in a smooth build for our prototype. After we completed the prototype stage, we went on to create a website presenting the concept in a more holistic fashion, explaining the next steps we want to take with the idea and the great potential for success it has.
What we learned
Through any technical project, we will always run into difficulties that are out of our hands and so in the context of this project, we learned that we should have came more prepared with spare hardware to avoid losing time on small malfunctions. We also learned that team collaboration and more specifically, the splitting of tasks into smaller divisions between our team members based on our individual strengths, is extremely vital, as it is the key to success in a high-pressure competition.
What's next for Wauve
As we move forward, our plan is to make the design more user-friendly by incorporating a wrist strap that measures heart rate and blood pressure. This will provide a more personalized and targeted approach to mental health support. Additionally, we intend to integrate a predictive AI model that analyzes the data from the wrist strap to determine the optimal times to generate the soothing sound. This approach has the potential to offer a more effective and tailored solution for managing mental health conditions. Moreover, we want to integrate all the information collected into a Wauve app that can track the progress of an individual's mental health over a timeline.
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