FlexCore
Description:
FlexCore is the first shirt of its kind, as it was designed to protect your body and enhance your workouts from rep to rep. The FlexCore hardware and software open the possibilities for new methods of physical training and therapy. Please find our full documentation and guide <a href="https://jagath-jaikumar.github.io/FlexCoreDocs/#unleash-your-iron-man"> here </a>
Inspiration:
Let's face it, going to the gym is a struggle. For many new gym-goers, the main fear of working out at a gym is not using correct form. Using the correct form is very important because: 1. You prevent possible injury 2. You build muscle much faster 3. You don't look like a newbie I've noticed several gym goers watching youtube videos on their phones while working out to keep proper form. However, we felt like we could do much better.
What it does:
The FlexCore MarcVI is the first smart shirt kit that monitors the position and angles of your arms to provide you with feedback on your motion. In addition, we built the FlexCore Gym iOS app for users to monitor their daily and weekly progress at the gym while using the FlexCore MarcVI. FlexCore Gym not only helps gym goers, but also provides a genius solution for athletes working towards perfecting their form at any sport. For example, our system will allow a mimic the football throw of Tom Brady or the swing of Tiger Woods... the possibilities are endless.
How we built it:
We started by building our FlexCore MarcVI shirt using an Arduino Flora, bluetooth, flex sensors, and IMUs. After we got the code running for the shirt, we began working on the iOS app in XCode using Swift. Finally, we linked the bluetooth between the devices to transmit the data wirelessly.
Challenges we ran into:
As a team, we have minimal prior experience developing for iOS and Arduino. We have never used the IMU sensor or flex sensor before, so incorporating them was difficult before we spent time learning the systems. Connecting the bluetooth interface between the Arduino and the iPhone was a struggle. We had to spend several hours just trying to link the two before we were able to send data wirelessly.
Accomplishments that we're proud of:
We are extremely proud of having a working proof of concept. From our experience in hackathons, we know that setting an overly ambitious goal often leads to disappointment. For this hackathon, we set consistent achievable goals that drove us step by step towards a product that we can demo. In addition, we are proud of our collaboration. Each of us was responsible for a different task in the project, but we worked well together by communicating well and holding team meetings at regular intervals to keep ourselves on track.
What we learned:
We learned a lot about iOS development and working with bluetooth modules. It took several hours of reading and experimenting to work through many of the problems that we faced. We also learned how to write documentation using Slate Docs.
What's next:
We want to expand on our list of motions! In addition, we'd like to configure the motions to work on people of different sizes. We think that the FlexCore code basis can be a great starting point for members of the open source community to take this idea and run with it. We'd like to keep working on this project going forward, and we want to spread this idea to others to let them customize it for themselves!
Built with:
Swift, C++, iOS, XCode, Arduino, IMU, Accelerometer, Flex Sensors, IOT, NeoPixel LED
Prizes we're going for:
HAVIT RGB Mechanical Keyboard
Hexacopter Drone
TBI Pro Gaming Headset
$100 Amazon Gift Cards
Grand Prize
Lutron Caseta Wireless Kit
Hacker gear & swag from HERE.com
Blu R2 Plus Smartphones
Raspberry Pi Arcade Gaming Kit