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. → Read more