Final Project

Idea

The idea came from my recent experience participating in a hackathon. During this event, I had an idea with my friend Leo that we can build a wearable device that listens to conversations and provide live feedback through haptics or red/green signals. Our vision was that we could use these devices in challenging scenarios such as dating, professional presentations, or parent-child conversations, where users might not know how to express themselves properly. We hoped that the wearable device can act as a coach to help users become a more confident speaker.

However, we didn't have any hardware experiences and couldn't find teammates with hardware expertise. In the end, we could only build the software prototype showing how the conversation can be recorded for LLM to analyze. While our software demo still won an prize, I knew we were missing the necessary piece of device to fully realize our idea.

Coming to MIT and discovering the course How to Make (almost) Anything, I knew I had the chance to develop the skillsets that I lacked. Through this class, I hope to continue

Research

I started researching more about how to build a successful wearable device. My initial search landed me on the details of building my own ring:

  • Smart Ring Development

    • I immediately learned how challenging it would be to build a ring device, which involves building a flexible circuit board that can fit in the small space of the ring. After consulting with , I switched my focus to developing a wearable necklace, which allows more room for error in my first time building something.

    Similar Products

    I also started researching about similar products in the field to learn about what is currently offered and what could potentially be added. After some searches I landed on a few interesting products:

    • These are powerful AI wearable products that act as assistants and empower users' productivity. However, I feel these lack the immediate feedback for live conversations.

    Here's a demo of what my solution

    The wearable I design will be more subtle hopefully, with small vibration that will let the user know that they are saying something wrong.

    Necklace

    I tried sketching different design of the necklace, mainly trying different shapes and contours.

    Planning

    With 3D printing week starting and electronics design week coming up, I started to do more research in how I should design the case and the PCB board.

    Week 5

    Here are the schematics design and PCB layout I worked on during week 5:

    The next step is to iterate my design and see whether the PCB would fit in a watch or a necklace, which I would need to design an appropriate casing for.