Arduino Programming & Hardware Design Volunteer

Arduino Programming & Hardware Design

Public Invention believes all software should be free, and for this reason, and seeks motivated college students (graduate or undergraduate) to volunteer with the movement for free hardware inventions “in the public, for the public”. We seek an Arduino/PlatformIO programmer or hardware engineer to pioneer open-source medical devices.

The initial need is to work on Project #60: General Purpose Alarming Device [1] which is developing a small general-purpose hardware alarm module with a general-purpose alarm API. It will connect to an alarm subsystem with secure, reliable, and publicly testable open-source software for the Greenfield project. This is one of the modules tied to the second version of the PolyVent [2] open-source research ventilator prototype currently using the VentOS [3] open software for universal ventilation. All these Public Invention projects were created during the pandemic need and are still successfully operating.

The role implies coming up to speed with current development, using hardware drives in PlatformIO, and having an understanding of the Arduino environment. An understanding of PID Controllers will also be helpful

Future work for this role will likely continue for years writing technical papers for hardware, user testing, developing and integrating new modules such as the reliable GUI, and controlling a proportional flow valve. It will include extensive performance testing and reliability testing. Note that the prototypes are in high demand, so it is likely that a new main board prototype will be designed and built. Additionally, a major research effort will be to develop and test additional "air drive" modules. The current drive is based on a proportional valve, but an air drive based on a blower would make the whole system more versatile.

Public Invention asks every public inventor for a commitment of 6 hours per week for 6 months.

[1] - https://github.com/PubInv/PubInv/blob/master/ideas/Project%20%2360:%20General%20Purpose%20Alarm%20Device.md

[2] - https://gitlab.com/polyvent/polyvent

[3] - https://gitlab.com/project-ventos/ventos

Skills

Arduino programming (PlatformIO to program the ESP32 hardware), electromechanical design, UX skills, project management, product development, I2C, SPI (to communicate with SAMD21 motor controllers for stepper motors), serial port

If you consider yourself an agent of change and want to improve the world, join us!

Please submit your resume and a statement of interest to volunteers@pubinv.org