Consulting Hardware Designer for Open Source Hardware Project The MIT House_n research group is seeking experts in analog and digital electronics design and sensor interfacing to help us establish an open source hardware development project. We are looking for people who have a bit of extra time to devote to making design modifications and critiquing open source designs for compact wireless accelerometer sensor nodes. We have a limited amount of funds to compensate those individuals who make the most significant contributions. The project is funded by a four-year NIH grant to develop a hardware and software system that will enable medical researchers to affordably measure physical activity type and intensity and its location in very large populations of adults using ordinary mobile phones. We will be modifying existing MIT-designed wireless accelerometer devices. These devices are currently about the size of a quarter and are able to sense triaxial acceleration at the body segments they are placed on. The goal is to create sensors that are very inexpensive to produce, small, reliable, and provide real-time data to mobile phones that can be processed to automatically detect physical activity type, intensity, and duration using pattern recognition algorithms. Information about what the mobile phone user is doing could then be used by novel mobile phone applications for health, entertainment, education, etc. We welcome anyone interested in hardware design and ubiquitous computing to participate in the project. To be added to the project mailing list for updates as the project gets started, send a note to Stephen Intille (inti...@mit.edu). To be eligible for consulting, an individual must have proven expertise in analog and digital electronics design as well as experience interfacing electronic circuitry such as micro controllers and signal conditioning electronics to digital or analog sensors. In particular, we seek individuals with previous experience in designing (e.g. selection of components, design of electronic schematics, CAD design of PCB), prototyping (e.g. creating preliminary prototypes for debugging purposes), and testing and debugging electronic circuits designed for various sensing applications. Individuals should also have experience compiling the design specifications (e.g. components bill of materials, PCB construction materials, and gerber file production, and detailed assembly instructions) as well as in communicating this information in detail to external companies for manufacturing. Micro controller programming (e.g. PIC, 8051, ATMEL, TI) using high level languages such as C as well as previous experience with wireless transceivers (e.g. Nordic VLSI, Texas instruments, Zigbee or Bluetooth) is a plus. Physical proximity to MIT in Cambridge, MA is helpful but not necessarily required for participation. Please send an email and resume or CV to Dr. Stephen Intille via email (inti...@mit.edu) describing the devices that you have designed and why you are interested in participating in an open source hardware development effort. Last modified: 2/22/08 |
