110 Doller Mind Controlled Prostheis

In this Instructable I will teach you how to make a mind controlled claw. The purpose behind this is so that everybody, regardless of money or health insurance, can have a prosthesis claw (the reason I am not calling it an arm is because it is really more of a claw and is probably best used as a tool as opposed to a replacement hand). Also it is a pretty fun toy to have, a mind controlled claw. It as of right now only has one degree of movement (though I am working on enhancing it) but is in my opinion still worth it because it is so easy to put on (being mind controlled) and relatively cheap for a prosthesis as well as comfortable because it is controlled with your mind not your nerves. In the next step I will tell you the basic concept but if you have any ideas, please contribute. I have never taken any sort of electronics class beyond basic introduction to engineering and so my knowledge of electronic is pretty limited.



P.S. Sorry about the length, I had a lot to say and no idea how to say it. I think that if you are at all electronically experienced you probably just have to read the basic concept and maybe the materials list to understand the project enough to do it for yourself. Its really pretty simple, you just would not know it from my descriptions. Plus, if you do it yourself you will probably do it better and then you can share what you did with all the other people trying to slosh through my descriptions. The only reason I am putting this up at all right now without pictures is so that people who get the basic concept can follow it as a loose guideline while building their own mind controlled hand.


Check out a video the finished product in action at   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmp1g29CIpQ

( In the video it is not mounted but I am currently working on that)
 

Step 1 Concept

The idea behind this is essentially I took a Mattel Mindflex apart and hooked it up to a servo then attached that to a grabber picker upper. To do make the servo respond to my concentration levels, I hooked up a light sensor (using a Cds photocell) up to a red "start" light that I attached to the top green light to siphon power from it so when you fully concentrate the red "start" light receives power and triggers the light sensor which then triggers then the rest of the circuit. (It is necessary to have the red light because the green did not trigger it for some reason). So when you hit full concentration, the red starter light is siphoning power from the top light that is then used that to trigger a reed relay which would in turn trigger a 12 volt relay that would complete the servos circuit causing it to run and contract the hand. Though the idea is pretty basic I feel there is a lot of expanding that can be done on it to end up with something that is cheap and available but useful to someone without an arm/hand. I built a arm personally because the grabber reacher I had was long, but I am sure you could build a short one to be more like a hand by making your own animatronic hand or buying one of the shorter grabber reachers. The possibilities with this are limitless and that is one of my favorite features about the design is that it has so many different possibilities. For example, on my prototype have the choice on installing different hand components to the servo to serve different purposes. One of them being a claw (grabber reacher/picker upper) to pick stuff up with and then another is a robot grabber reacher that looks more like a hand (To serve different purposes such as scratching your cat). The eventual hope with this is that someday I and anyone else using this toy for a long time will make a instant connection in the brain that when I want to move my hand I "concentrate'.

Tip!
Don’t try to do this mod without fully understanding the concept of what you are trying to do. I am not good enough at explaining things and I honestly don’t think it is a good idea to try this without some knowledge in electronics. Just please, be careful not to break your Mindflex. And trying to do this DIY off my descriptions without knowing what you are doing is almost ensuring that your Mindflex gets broken.


(The teardown pictures are not mine, I found them on this sitehttp://www.bigmech.com/misc/mindflex/   (They are much better than mine)

Comments

[lemonie]

You should build this, then publish it. Best wishes for it.

L

[Diyified]

Thanks for the wishes-Dont worry I do intend to post some pictures online today of the build, I actually had a couple reasons for posting this without pictures (I did not have pictures because I did not write this at home) but chose to post anyway because as I said below I was just trying to get it all together and see what people thought of the idea, and to give a basic guideline so people with some electronics know-how could get the basic concept and go from there.

[lemonie]

It'll get lost as something unfinished, do it in parts perhaps?

L

[Diyified]

Thats a good idea but it is actually mostly finished-All that I have left to do is mount it up on the arm with something a little stronger than duct tape and figure out how to get the three position switch installed. I am a little reluctent to mount it all up though because I am still taking pics of the different parts but I should have a completed video up soon.

[karossii]

look forward to pictures and such; until then I would like to reccomend a good spell check, and perhaps if you can use Word or Open Office, a grammar check as well. It would greatly benefit your instructable, which is currently plagued with bad spelling and grammar.

[Diyified]

Thanks! Yes I know I do intend to do a little revison tomarrow I wrote the entire thing in a bit of a hurry if you can't tell :) but wrote it mostly just to get it all together and see what people thought of the idea. I will be uploading pics and doing a spelling/grammer check tomarrow as well as fixing some minor errors so stay tuned!