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The Research and Development team is currently working on a number of projects this summer. Here’s a rundown of the projects in the works, and some opportunities for you to get involved.

Musical Grasping Training Aid

This project originated as a design challenge submitted from the community. The goal was to have a device to help motivate a user to pick up and grasp an object. There was a particular user in mind who responded well to music, so the idea was to have a lightweight, robust device that played their favorite songs while the device was held and stopped the song when released.

The design is now on it’s third iteration and is expected to be published and added to the library by the end of summer. An initial version was designed by a community volunteer. The MMC team built upon this original design and created a second version that was built and sent to the user for testing. That testing went well, so our summer co-op student Didi is now incorporating the testing feedback into a ‘final’ design. (Although admittedly, Open AT is never truly finalized).

The current design of the training aid uses a 12-sided tubular design which conductive copper tape on each side. The device uses an MPR121 capacitive touch sensor and copper tape strips for conductive sensing, which is how the device recognizes when the user is interacting and holding the device. Once the device is grasped and activated, music files uploaded onto a microSD card are played through the speaker until the device is no longer being held.

Didi is currently working on improving the user interface of the Musical Training Grasping Aid to make it easier to adjust the volume, skip through songs, access the batteries, and change the music to keep it fresh and engaging. Additional buttons will be placed on the back end of the device to skip songs and cycle through different volume settings. The microSD card and batteries will be made accessible to the secondary user in case the batteries run out or the current songs no longer motivate the user and need to be changed.

If you or someone you know would be interested in testing the final version, please contact us at info@makersmakingchange.com.

Big Open Switch

Open assistive switches like the MMC60 Switch and Interact Switch are very popular, but we often get requests for something bigger. In responses, we’ve kicked off a new project to design a big switch — hence the working title, “Big Open Switch.”

The goals of this design is to have a cost-effective, maker-friendly switch with a large activation surface with a diameter of at least 120 mm (4.75 in). The switch should be similar in size and function to the commercially available AbleNet Big Red or now-discontinued Pancake Switch. We’re also aiming to have interchangeable toppers like the MMC60 and Interact Switch so that different textures and shapes can be applied to the top.

Derrick is taking the lead on this project. He has explored several concepts and built a working prototype. The next steps are to complete the conceptual model in Fusion CAD software before building some more units for user testing and diving into the detailed design and documentation.

This switch will be a welcome addition to the library and provide another option for those needing a large diameter switch with a low activation force. Like all the switches in the library, this one will also be compatible with switch interfaces, adapted controllers like the Xbox Adaptive Controller and PlayStation Access Controller, and switch-adapted toys.

If you have a suggestion for what to call this switch, or want to test a prototype, please contact us at info@makersmakingchange.com.

Aspen Sliding Joystick

Josie is taking the lead on wrapping up the design of the newest joystick in the OpenAT Joystick family, the Aspen Sliding Joystick. We took the analog version of the Birch Mini Joystick, gave it a more compact enclosure and a new name! The Aspen Sliding Joystick is a small, analog joystick that is great for someone who wants a low-profile joystick with a small range of motion. It has a 3.5 mm TRRS jack and is compatible with the Forest Joystick Mouse Hub, the Xbox Adaptive Controller, and the PlayStation Access Controller.

The Aspen Sliding Joystick will replace the analog variant of the Birch Mini Joystick, while we rename the USB variant to be the Birch Sliding USB Joystick. Both the Birch and Aspen Joysticks have a unique joystick motion that is sliding rather than pivoting. We separated the Aspen and Birch joysticks so that the Aspen could have a new, more compact enclosure (as seen below!) and to provide more distinction between the USB and analog variants. The Aspen Sliding Joystick does not require any screws, which reduces costs, and the smaller enclosure allows you to put your joysticks and switches closer together.

The Aspen Sliding Joystick and the Birch Sliding USB Joystick also share a set of joystick toppers, the Sliding Joystick Toppers, to allow the user to customize how they interact with their joystick. They also have the same set of holes on the bottom of the joystick to attach mounting adapters. For ¼-20” thread camera mounts, we have the Camera Mount Adapter, and for the RAM-B mounting system we have the new RAM Mount Adapter as well.

The Aspen Sliding Joystick will be coming to the library shortly, so stay tuned!

Open Playback Recorder V2.0 – PCB Version

The Open Playback Recorder is a device that was added to our library earlier this year and has been a big hit so far. Users can playback pre-recorded messages using an assistive switch like the commercially available AbleNet BigMack or AbleNet Step-by-Step. The device has three levels of recordings, and the user can play the recordings on each level one by one with the press of their switch.

While it works great, the original design published on the site took hours to assemble and was susceptible to wiring mistakes. To improve the making experience and reduce the chance of mistakes, we decided to design an updated version that uses a custom printed circuit board (PCB) instead of multiple protoboards and lots of soldered wires. (The original pictured below).

Brad is taking the lead on creating this updated version. He’s created a set of custom PCBs and modified the enclosure. The build now takes less than an hour, and the size of the device has been shrunk down as well. The updated Open Playback Recorder should hit the MMC Library in July.

OpenAT Device Documentation Template Update

We feel very strongly about the importance of good documentation for the success of Open Assistive Technology. Last summer, we released an initial version of a , intended to make it easier to ensure that all the information and files — the know-how — to build, use and improve upon a design is complete, comprehensive, properly licensed, and published. This summer, Stephan is leading an update to our documentation templates to better meet the needs of our community.

The goals for this update are to make it easier for our volunteer community to submit their own designs, make sure documentation is consistent across all our devices, and to help other Open AT designers effectively document their designs.

Our current templates do not provide detailed instructions for new designers on what should be included and where, and we’ve found they are meant more for experienced users to work with. We’re going to make it easier for our volunteers to use our templates by improving help text in the templates, directing people to specific examples of other projects on our website, and expanding our documentation playbook. The playbook will have detailed instructions, examples, and point volunteers to other resources, making it easier for someone new to adding designing open-source devices to document and submit them to our library.

As our community and library has grown, the style and content of our documentation has changed. You may have noticed earlier designs don’t have the same level of documentation as our newer devices, and how the information for each project is stored changed. Once the updates are complete, we’ll be working over time to update existing projects to ensure documentation is consistent.

Finally, we hope making our templates open-source and easily accessible will inspire other designers of open-source assistive technology to use them for their own designs. Improving documentation of devices will make it easier for makers to make, and users to use new and exciting AT. It would also allow us to gather more feedback to continue to improve the services we offer to our community.

MMC Assistive Device Library Review

The Makers Making Change currently hosts over 200 designs for open source assistive technology. Jake is taking the lead on reviewing the devices and seeking feedback on which devices in the library could use improvement. This could involve changes to the design, improvements or expansion of documentation, or perhaps replacing the design with a better version.

Thanks to everyone who has provided feedback on which device they would like to see updated. We’ll leave the open to continue to gather feedback.

We’ve been leveraging the GitHub Issues and Projects features to collect and prioritize what needs to be done for each device. We’ve created a project that provides a publicly viewable list of the different tasks. Not all devices exist as a GitHub repository, so that is also on the to-do list.

There are a lot of devices, so we could use your help. There will be a variety of ways to contribute including creating and updating documentation, taking photos, creating videos for usage and assembly, recreating STL-only design in CAD, improving designs, etc. If you’re interested, please contact us at info@makersmakingchange.com.

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