Clifford Agius
- Pronouns: He/Him
- Talk Length: 60 mins
3D printed Bionic Hand a little IOT and a Xamarin Mobile App
Meet Kayden, a local 15yr old young man and close family friend, who was born with no left forearm and hand.
The National Health Service (NHS) is an amazing service in the UK, however their prosthetic provision is both basic and expensive (to the NHS).
Surely with modern technology we can not only improve the lives of young people like Kayden but also demonstrate how we can do it more cost effectively than current options. This talk details how I set about building on the wonderful work of the OpenBionics team to provide Kayden with an alternative to the NHS prosthesis.
We'll discuss:
- How 3D printing of parts for the hand can be much more effective (cost and function) than fibre glass moulds
- Using home 3D printing we can create a viable articulated hand
- Using off the shelf commodity IoT boards from Adafruit can be used to program the hand (and how this is more viable than alternative approaches) but more recently in the project moving to the new WildernessLabs F7 board so that the whole project in DotNet.
- Creating a Xamarin application to connect via Bluetooth and provide customisation and control options for the hand and the challenges of UI design for those with accessibility issues.
- How this option can reduce the costs from £000's to several hundred £s and is being done as an Open Source project which will hopefully lead to designs and kits being available for others around the world to build their own.
Attendees will learn about and see demos of:
- The 3D printed hand and related components
- Programming of the IoT board and sensors (In DotNet and C#)
- Creation of the Xamarin application to customise the hand.
- Bluetooth connection options.
Please note: Kayden and his family have given express permission to use his name and images for this talk.
About Clifford
Freelance Developer that just so happens to fly a Boeing 787 around the world.
Cliff is a senior first officer with a Major UK Airline on one of its newest jets the 787 Dreamliner.
He has a passion for flying from an early age, although his earlier career was spent as an apprentice at the Ford Motor Company and then a Project Engineer covering Electrical/Software/Robot engineering in major automotive brands. However his drive, focus and determination was always to become a pilot.
After self funding his pilots license and passing all necessary exams his first commercial flight was with Aer Arran (Irish regional airline), where he flew ATRs from Dublin and Galway to Ireland regions and into the UK. After this the jets got bigger, the cattle slightly less and eventually he applied and was selected to join a Major UK Airline. After initially flying the Airbus A320 Cliff has continued his personal development and now fly’s the fleet of 787’s across the world, including the recently arrived B787-900 with the new First Class.
Although the current jets are technologically advanced its Cliff’s every decision and calculation on a minute-by- minute basis that carries over 215 people safely back and forth over the Atlantic or Siberia, therefore every decision is a critical one. He therefore has acute awareness of people’s decision-making processes and the consequences of these. Its these decisions that impact on people’s lives, from lost luggage to engine issues to landing in fog, every decision is critical and everyone has an impact on how the airline remain competitive minute by minute, if not second by second. When not flying the plastic jet he spends his time huddled over his laptop thrashing the keyboard and working on some project from embedded systems to .Net. Personal challenges are always part of Cliff’s spare time and as well as continuing to design computer software he is busy with family life of a Wife, 3 Boys and 2 dogs and is also a keen cyclist, with the Alps Passporte’s challenge as next year’s goal.