uECG - small open source wireless ECG sensor

Quite symbolically, this Saturday, on March 2, Kyiv will host the first Maker Faire Kyiv in a long time! The last one was in 2018.

Where, in addition to uECG and uMyo, we’ll present our first project in collaboration with TURFPTAx 

The device working name is uLabel and it is an ML dataset collection tool for finger movements. 

Makers from Kyiv (and anywhere else, if you’ll be visiting) - we will be glad to see you!

After the events of last year (when our stores on Tindie and Etsy were blocked), we decided that this was a "sign" to stop a little and approach the future sales of our devices more reliably. 

Selling products from Ukraine was a quest from the very beginning, we spent almost a year to launch sales on Tindie in 2020, and a week after appearing on Etsy, we were blocked without specifying the exact reason (there was only a general list of policy categories).  

In any case, we’re grateful to Tindie for allowing us to sell our devices at all. 

And most importantly, we thank you all for supporting us and using uECG and uMyo! 💖🤗

But financial instruments in Ukraine do not allow us to fully use the existing platforms (we don’t have PayPal or Stripe) and we are very tired. We decided to take some time off to find alternative sales methods and platforms.  

So until September 2024, we will suspend sales of uECG and uMyo and concentrate on our other work, of which there is a lot. We would be happy if you continue to work on your projects and develop using our devices until we are back. We will provide support as before, but we will not be able to sell the devices.  

Good luck with your projects – and we’ll be in touch!

Today, May 11th, is one year since our friend, Denys Antipov, died at the frontlines. We wrote about him here. 

Several events were held in his honor: today we went to the unveiling of a memorial plaque of him, in the Askoldova Mohyla park - a traditional memorial to fighters for Ukrainian independence. Yesterday we went to a screening of a documentary filmed about him. And then there was also a presentation of a scholarship for students of Korean, started by his parents, that was held at the Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University, which he attended and taught at.

At the Askoldova Mohyla, a lot of people came with flowers to attend the unveiling ceremony. The last few days were cloudy, and there were clouds in the morning too - but when the ceremony started, the sun came out. Denys’ mother unveiled the plaque, which had his image and his favorite quote engraved on it. It was a very emotional and ceremonial moment, and many people were crying. We were surprised to see that the plaque was one of only two there - although, knowing Denys, we probably shouldn’t have been!

Different people spoke then, and made very moving and motivational speeches. First, there were religious leaders and a guest of honor - the ambassador of the Republic of Korea. Then, Denys’ friends and colleagues from the university spoke. Finally, his mother, as always, gave a powerful, emotional, and very motivating speech. And when you see her, it is really not hard to understand why Denys was the person he was.

(Photo from his friend Oleg's Facebook post)

A year ago, people were heartbroken, in pain and mourning. But today, the mood was different. People were still sad, and in mourning, but at the same time, they were very determined and angry. They cried, and talked about driving the enemy out from our land, and how motivated they were to do so, and to continue doing what Denys, and others like him, did, and to live every day of their lives to the best of their ability. 

As we looked at the people around, we felt that they shared a common feeling - and we felt this at the yesterday’s screening, too, from the people in the audience. Denys touched a lot of lives. When we saw, and heard, different people talk about him in the documentary, it was hard not to cry all the time. And the more we heard about him, the more new things we learned. For example, we learned that he translated the manual for the first Hyundai Intercity+ trains operated by our national railway - which is a random fact that we completely didn’t expect!

At the end of the movie, his colleague from the university said that she believes, truly, that he’s still here, among us, because he simply can’t stop existing with this kind of energy. She said: “He just is [here], with us”. And honestly, that’s how it feels all the time. We think a lot about him, especially when we are working, and it really feels like he knows it, and like he’s here, and like he was never gone.

Слава героям! Слава Україні! Героям слава!

Hello everyone - uECG is back! It's a small batch for now, so get them while you can!

We have made some changes to the board that will hopefully make it more reliable and efficient - especially the IMU since we had some problems with them in the previous batch. We also produced this batch at JLCPCB as a way of optimizing the process and costs.

Changelog for v.4.52:

• Replaced AD8606 op amp with a pair of TLV271s;
• LDOs (3.3V for digital, 3V for analog side) were mixed in the previous version; strangely this didn’t affect functioning, but now this is fixed;
• Replaced BMI160 with LSM6DS3TR-C;
• Changed C6 capacitor from 2.2uF to 10uF for better low frequency performance;
• Replaced circuit protection (red LED) with diodes for more reliability;
• Changed charge resistor to 8.2K Ohm to fit the battery charging better;
• Replaced MCP71831 charger IC with TP4054;
• Added thermistor for measuring temperature;
• Changed RGB LED to different part number;

and last, but not least,

• Added Ultimate Robotics logo on the back of the PCB (!)

There will be some more updates in the nearest future, so stay tuned and stay safe!

P. S. And also, check out this cool animation our teammate Olha made specially for this batch's launch:

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Hi all! For a long time, uECG was the first and only device available for sale on Tindie. But this fall, everything has changed! We launched the second device - uMyo!

uMyo is a single-channel EMG device that uses two attachment methods (dry and wet electrodes), but also:

• It's wireless! No more mess of wires when working with EMG
• Works with any Arduino via nRF24 radio module (we wrote an Arduino library for that)
• Works with ESP32 with no additional hardware (we wrote an Arduino library for that as well)
• Multiple units (up to 12 in current version) can send data to the same Arduino/ESP32
• Sends out detected muscle activity level, 4-bins spectrum and in nRF24 mode - also raw EMG data

Although uMyo is already on sale, but you can read the history of its creation on the project page, but this is not the end! We plan to come up with and post mini projects from different areas where you can use your muscles (spoiler: their purpose can be very unexpected), the whole process and code will be available for reproduction and inspiration. Subscribe!

At the end of 2021 we got an orbitrack - and immediately wasn't happy about its in-built computer: not only it has poor visibility and no colors - but also its heart rate monitor works only when you keep hands on the bike's handlebar, it has no contacts on vertical moving parts.

So we replaced it (in fact, did that a couple of weeks before the war hit, so shooting a video took just a bit longer than we anticipated)

We took advantage of uECG project we are working on - so heart rate measurement is handled by the device, and ESP32 only receives its data via BLE. The project code is rather modular so a different heart rate sensor can be connected there instead (although characteristics UUID and parsing function should be changed for that, as well as advertiser filter), or it can be used without heart rate sensor at all - but then it won't be as useful.

The main value of that project is that it shows current heart zone as a color (area between resting heart rate and maximum heart rate is divided into areas and zone defines your training mode), so you can run at optimal load for your goal.

Connection to orbitrack's speed sensor is very simple: sensor is just a switch that is open/closed at different parts of the revolution, from the amount of state changes you can estimate revolution time - and that can be translated into speed in several ways (I'm translating it to bike speed, it can be translated into running speed as well - but orbitrack's load is more similar to cycling than to running, even though not equal to either of those).

Calories measurement is rather arbitrary - I found some formulas for calculating orbitrack calories rate online and just hope they are reasonably fitting, no idea how true they actually are.

code link https://github.com/ultimaterobotics/orbitrack_esp32

Last week, we reopened uECG sales. 

We’ve been preparing for it for some time before we learned the news on 7th of June. That day was an unexpected blow for us and for some time, we didn’t know when (or how) we would recover. However, it also made us realize that not only is the war no reason to be slower than usual, but that we can’t afford to be slow anymore.

For this uECG batch, we have, as usual, prepared a huge firmware update - fixed IMU bugs, improved R detection and EMG mode, rewrote the bootloader and added multi-device functionality. We’ll be writing a separate log about the firmware update with more details about the fixes and new features. Of course, the buyers who have previous uECG batches (except for the Indiegogo one - we didn’t check compatibility yet) can update the bootloader/firmware too and enjoy the updates. 

We also designed and printed new packaging for the devices - a huge step ahead for us, and we will write about them too! - and made some overall quality improvements. Hope the buyers will like them! 

We’ll be writing about other stuff that’s happened in the meantime, both here on Hackaday and on our social networks - so stay tuned for new updates.

uECG is available in our shop on Tindie.

Today, we learned that our friend, Denys Antipov, died at the frontlines from artillery fire on 11th of May. It was near Izum in Kharkiv oblast. We are heartbroken and refuse to believe it. 

To say that he was a good man is an understatement. He was amazing. We met him back in 2014, when he started a large project, a robotic arm prosthesis, when the war first broke out - and joined without a second thought. This is largely how our team formed. The project goal was initially to help veterans who lost arms and hands in battle, and also anybody else. Our uEMG project is a part of it. 

He started the project just before he himself went to war for the first time, and came back in 2016. Later, he rented and furnished a small workshop with CNC machines and 3D printers. There, he cut wood, leather and other materials with lasers and made things like beautiful wooden puzzles, figurines, gifts, and engravings on objects like wooden boxes and knives. His recent passion was making musical boxes which played folk Ukrainian songs. He even started a Youtube channel and opened an Ebay shop to promote Ukrainian culture to people from different countries. He also 3D printed and sold supplies for 3D printers, and once collected 100 different 3D filament spools which he arranged by colors on a huge wall-sized stand, which made him very amused and proud. Later he bought a huge inkjet printer to expand a bit. The workshop grew quite a lot since 2016, and there were several people working there before the 2022 war broke out. He also created another large project - an online platform where other army veteran makers could have their businesses and sell stuff and promote it. It's called ua.gifts. It is big and has united a lot of people, but it started in that same small workshop.

Denys was (it's so hard to write this word!) a bright light, full of energy in everything that he did. He could do anything, and often all at once, and crack jokes in the process. Formally he was a soldier and a Korean translator and university professor. But really he was so much more, and there was something about him that would make you believe you could do anything. He often gave interviews and told news from all over the world about the projects, and lately about war. On 9th of March, he got injured and was in the hospital. Back then, we were worried but really glad he was alive and for some reason we believed nothing else could happen to him, because he was already injured once - and lightning (or shell) doesn't strike twice, does it…

And we also planned to do so much together. It's hard to understand what to do further. We don't know how to deal with this loss. We just want him to be back so much, to win the war, and then to see him again and continue our projects!

We’re proud to have known you. We will never forget you. You will always be our friend, and a hero! Glory to the heroes!

P.S. And here's how the musical box that Denys made sounds... It's playing Chervona Ruta, a popular Ukrainian song written in the 1970s and still catchy today. When people get drunk, they often sing it (which is how we know).
And this will sound even sadder, but we can't help but wonder what melodies he would make next for the box....

Yesterday we learned that Tindie platform, on which, as you know, we sell uECG, wrote a post about the war in Ukraine and in particular about the experience of our team. They also wrote to us in a separate letter about the reaction of the company itself and the community - that Siemens has had started a €1 million matching donations round for our country, limited sales and shipments for stores from russia and belarus, and that makers from these countries do not support the actions of their governments. It was sudden and very supportive of them! We love Tindie as a platform/community and it's great to have them on our side.  

But we also realized that we haven't made updates for a long time... I would like to share some events that happened after our previous post. Our intentions to go to Kyiv suddenly became technically impossible - public transport stopped running in full, which made it impossible to leave the railway station. Therefore, we stayed in Lviv to wait until the situation with transport improves.  

We did not sit idly by. First of all, we took care of ourselves and each other - building up the household infrastructure (buying food, household goods, kitchen appliances, pillows, blankets, slippers, etc.). These actions gave us the opportunity to at least eat hot food, and to recover as much as possible. At the same time, we plunged into volunteer work. Almost every day, together or separately, we bought various kinds of things and handed them over to volunteers, who distributed them further according to their intended purpose. Most of these things were medicines that were needed right now and on the same day they were sent to Kyiv, Kharkiv and other cities. Volunteers distributed lists of what medicine was needed, but they were often long, so we further narrowed them by making a list including the ones that are spent faster and always needed, and some rare ones that are hard to find, and targeted those specifically.

We also kept an eye out for requests for hard to get or specialized things. A couple days we hunted for pillows and blankets for refugees, as the city suddenly ran out of them, and were able to supply a dozen or so. Then we turned to equipment requests, and were able to get 2 chainsaws to transfer to a military unit (the one that, to our horror, got bombed later near Lviv…) and also 3 oximeters, a blood pressure monitor and a glucometer to a group of wounded military. One day we also randomly got a couple kg of tofu for a vegan cafe which provides food to refugees for free, had to get it from farmers outside Lviv as there was no tofu here… Focus was never our strongest suit. For now, we ran out of money for a little bit, but we’ll continue as soon as we can. Below is a small photo report.  

Going back to our plans: just recently, we actually still managed to go back to Kyiv for a day and pick up some of the things and components for projects. Now the whole team continues to stay in Lviv and we are trying to understand our next steps. We miss Kyiv a lot and we do not know for how long we will stay in Lviv, but we do not want to go back empty-handed. So we are thinking about something, but it’s not clear for now if we will be able to pull it off.

We are also trying to shift some of the attention to work, but we have much less resources and focus than before. Although we must say that so far doing even a little work has been grounding.

It's hard to talk about plans when we don't know how today will go and what events will take place in Ukraine. We’re trying to live one day at a time, as a lot of people here now do - although we try to plan for 2-3 days (or more!) now too. Therefore, we will try to post updates in retrospect whenever possible.

We also wanted to thank all our customers/buyers who expressed concern and supported us both in words and in deeds! Thank you very much! 

And for everyone who wants to support Ukraine, we share again the details for donations.

It’s best to support this fund directly: https://www.comebackalive.in.ua/

Thanks!

Hi everyone! 

When the war started on February 24, we woke up at night in Kyiv from explosions. Our first instinct was: what about our tech? We need to make sure nothing happens to it. And we need to prepare so that we can continue our work in another place. Who knows how long it will take? It could take months. We were used to the 8-year slowly simmering war. But actually, it was hard to even think. We couldn’t sleep because of the sounds of air defense and rockets, there were jets and helicopters flying not far from our windows and air strike warnings several times a day.

Eventually it was hard to make any decisions because we were too sleep deprived and confused. So we packed our projects - a new batch of uECGs, uEMG in various debug stages, other projects. A maker’s survival kit: stuff for soldering, a tester, alcohol, most used passive components, some active ones, some rare ones, some nRF52832s, some EPS32… Lipo cells, connectors, modules. It was surreal to cut the strips from the spools of passives and label them as there was shooting in the streets in our area. We had to avoid windows as per instructions, cause they were shooting at them sometimes. I remember calmly telling my teammate - hey, can you cut the strips a bit further from the window. And they were like - “oh! sorry, okay”. We even packed one of the Creality Ender 3’s with us. And then went to Lviv by evacuation train the next day. 

The train was full of people, they even slept in the corridors. But as we were on our way, in the train, trying to catch some sleep, we could finally think - and feel something. We already wanted back. It just felt wrong. We wanted to help, to fight, anything. In Lviv, it is safe. It’s too quiet here. There’s volunteering here to be done, yes, and it is helpful. But we want to go home. We’ve been sitting here for almost two days having done almost nothing. So we’re going back to Kyiv tonight, and will help there.

Hopefully those who wait for uECGs will forgive us if we accidentally lose the latest batch of uECG in some fire or bombing! We know we promised they will be available soon. But we can produce another one when all of this ends. Don’t worry, this should only take a few days.

P. S. If you want to help, please donate here: https://savelife.in.ua/en/donate/ This is a local non-profit called INTERNATIONAL CHARITABLE FOUNDATION ‘COME BACK ALIVE, they will distribute the funds at once here where needed.

There’s also a possibility to donate directly to Ukrainian Armed Forces, the methods to donate are here on the official website of Ukrainian Central Bank:

https://bank.gov.ua/en/news/all/natsionalniy-bank-vidkriv-spetsrahunok-dlya-zboru-koshtiv-na-potrebi-armiyi 

Any amount helps, but if you can’t, it’s fine too! 

You can find other ways to help, including locally, here: https://supportukrainenow.org/ 

In any case, we know you support our country!

Слава Україні!