Headache Tracker Wearable Development Plan

As someone who gets headaches frequently for otherwise unknown reasons, I would like to gain a better understanding of the behavioral and environmental factors that trigger my headaches. Are my headaches caused by changing light or weather patterns? Dehydration, or sleep deprivation? Or, all of these factors in a certain combination?

In order to understand my headache triggers, I need to gather data on my behavior and environment over a period of time (2-3 months) and correlate to my headaches. This is basically a big health data project in which I am the user and “patient.”

First step is to gather the data. This is where Physical Computing plays a role. There are two datasets I am interested in: data on my behavior, and data on my environment. The first dataset I will acquire is the behavioral data as that involves manual input versus using analog sensors. Analog sensors = additional complexity.

I need to build a wearable to gather this data, a bracelet I can use to track my behavior throughout the course of the day. I will prototype a wearable bracelet to manually track:

• When I drink water
• When I eat a meal
• My location (ITP, home, outside, inside)
• Headache begin and end

I will also use a FitBit bracelet to track sleep hours and quality, and physical activity.

Hopefully with enough data I will be able to establish behavioral patterns that correlate to my headaches!

My wearable bracelet will consist of 8 mini pushbuttons that when pressed, will log an event (i.e. drank water, had a meal, etc). A yellow LED will provide user feedback that a button was pressed and data recorded. A green LED will light up when the bracelet is powered, and will flash when the battery is low. An SD card will record the data and will need to be purged every night.

Here is the user flow of the bracelet circuit:

And a list of materials needed for the bracelet:

Lastly, here is an optimistic timeline for development of the bracelet prototype for this week. I will update the timeline on Sunday for the following week depending on how building the bracelet goes this week.

Phase One: Prototype Build and User Testing

Tuesday November 19
Meet with Ben Light during office hours to troubleshoot bracelet circuit prototype
Plan out circuit to include additional green LED and location of SD Card

Wednesday November 20
Update Arduino sketch code to include additional LED
Verify Arduino sketch works with circuit!
Get bracelet circuit working
Order microSD card and microSD breakout board

Friday November 22 – Sunday November 23
Troubleshoot location of battery and Arduino UNO
Create labels for buttons
Visit the Container Store for a box
Package everything together in time for user testing
Test microSD breakout board and microSD card work

Monday November 25
User Testing in class at ITP at 11AM
User Test: button labels, and where to attach wearable
Meet with Benedetta to plan out circuit with microSD breakout board and discuss coding sketch
Solder SD card breakout board to bracelet circuit prototype
Verify circuit works with microSD card

Wednesday November 27
Program sketch to record data!

Thursday November 28 – Saturday November 30
Research creating a Processing sketch to visualize data
Build simple graphs to visualize data

December 1 – 7 
Log data using wearable
Work on presentation and visualization of data