Amir would like to interact with his computer more easily

About Amir

Amir - DJ and producer at “Das Hertz” - was born with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. He is a technoartist enthusiastic about music and technology. He enjoys life, raves, and gaming and strives to pulverise the physical barriers when making music :-)

Challenge

Amir participated in HackaHealth 2022 with a successful project aimed at improving the interface for his music software. While the functional prototype, based on pressure sensors and an Arduino that converted sensor readings into MIDI signals, worked well for DJing, it did not meet his everyday needs. Amir spends a lot of time interacting with his computer for various tasks like browsing the web, gaming, and texting, but his current mouth-controlled joystick makes these interactions slow and inefficient.

The goal is to develop a more efficient interface facilitating Amir an easier control of his computer programs. The solution could involve incorporating additional sensors like eye tracking or pressure sensors or exploring purely software-based alternatives. These improvements should streamline Amir's interactions, making daily computer use much smoother and more efficient.

Solution

We developed a software-only solution that integrates with Amir’s existing setup. When he activates a specific trigger, a quick-access menu appears around the cursor, enabling actions like right-clicking, scrolling, and navigating the screen. The system is fully customizable and can be expanded with features such as copy-paste. The software is available on GitHub: https://github.com/timungereth/amirACLE.

Additionally, we designed a custom keyboard interface with multilayered circular layouts for more efficient typing. This system can also be paired with the pressure sensors we developed during Amir’s first challenge 2022.