Posts Tagged ‘shimmer’

The new EMG and GSR daughter cards have now been released and are officially available to Shimmer users. The EMG (Electromyogram) will prove a useful tool to existing users of the ECG daughter card with no software changes required except to support higher sampling rates, whilst readers will be familiar with the recent validation work carried out on the GSR (Galvonic Skin Response) daughter card for use in biomedical-orientated research applications.

The EMG daughter card is a highly economical wireless acquisition system for evaluating and recording the electrical activity produced by muscles using conventional disposable electrodes. The EMG works just like the existing Shimmer ECG daughter card allowing the addition of EMG measurement to existing Shimmer systems as a drop-in replacement. The EMG has low power consumption 180µA (leads connected) and a frequency range* of 5Hz-482Hz.

The GSR daughter card monitors skin conductivity between two reusable electrodes attached to two fingers of one hand and can be used in areas such as affective computing and to monitor aspects including stress, excitement, shock, and cognitive factors. The Shimmer GSR outperforms competing devices by using four digitally controlled measurement ranges. Developers use this capability to ensure accurate measurement across a variety of test subjects in real-world deployments.

The EMG and GSR daughter cards maintain an open system with no proprietary connectors, and have an open and extensible software and data format. They both capture data to the highest industry standards, and offer far superior flexibility due to wearable technology and small form factor allowing for greater usability in real world applications. Most notably, the EMG and GSR daughter cards match or often outperform competing gold standard sensor units, whilst offering better ergonomics at a cost-effective price.

A brief specification overview of the two daughter cards can be seen below:

EMG

GSR

The new daughter cards can be purchased by contacting info ‘at’ shimmer-research.com, and will be available to purchase from our online store in the coming weeks.

Shimmer Research is to attend Arab Health 2010 which taking place from the 25^th – 28^th of January at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre. Kieran Daly, VP of Business Development will be representing Shimmer Research, and can be contacted at AmRay Medical’s stand (Hall 2: Stand 2J70).

The Arab Health Exhibition & Congress is the largest healthcare exhibition in the Middle East, and the second largest in the world. Established 35 years ago, it provides a platform for the world’s leading manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors to meet the medical and scientific community in the Middle East and beyond.

Kieran Daly will be displaying the Shimmer unit in operation throughout the event and will be demonstrating the latest ECG application which remotely monitors and displays heart beat rate and QRS waveforms. The application also indicates a normal heart rate, and detects arrhythmias for real time patient monitoring.

To arrange a meeting with Kieran Daly – email us at: info ‘at’ shimmer-research.com.

With the arrival of the New Year, the development of the Shimmer platform has continued apace. The platform has recently been awarded the CE mark, proving it has met EU consumer health and safety requirements for medical equipment. The CE certification also includes the ECG, EMG, and Gyro daughter cards.

The certification demonstrates the platforms conformance and compliance to the requirements of Annex IV of Council Directive 1999/5/EC.

microSD

For members of our website’s user community, the Shimmer microSD Media Guide has just been posted to our Download/Documents section. The guide details the compatibility requirements, qualification list results, and data recovery tools for Shimmer users running applications that utilise the microSD functionality.

To download the guide, please click here.

In a recent article in the Life Science Review, Dr Declan Bogan looks at Connected Health, and the current businesses, projects, and research involved in the industry across the island of Ireland.

He notes the current difficulties facing the industry such as acceptance of the technologies involved by the end user, clinicians, and GP’s, along with the interoperability between various products. But goes onto note the vast growth that is predicted in the area with the Tele-health industry expected to grow to $8bn by 2012, from revenues of $591m in 2005.

Commenting on the contribution of businesses to research in the area, Dr. Bogan identifies Shimmer as a sensor platform that enables researchers to capture a wide range sensed data. He noted how the highly reconfigurable platform allows researchers to save time and money by moving beyond developing core foundation technologies and focus on the valuable data obtained by the wireless sensor platform.

Read Dr. Bogan’s full article on Connected Health in the Life Science Review.

Shimmer Research is proud to announce the launch of the next generation Shimmer, which has evolved from Shimmer 1.3 to offer new features and functionality to users of the platform.

The latest revision of the Shimmer platform adds improvements based on years of field trials and deployments. The most dramatic change is a patent-pending direct-to-host data transfer path from Shimmer’s MicroSD card to hasten data offload, minimize user training, and provide fail-safe data access. Power control features have been added including soft-power switching and low-battery shutdown. Finally a passive vibration sensor was added— this sensor efficiently signals when the device is in use.

Other new features on the Shimmer 2 platform are:

• Reset/User Programmable on/off switch
• SD Card with data-path MUX for full-speed host transfer when docked and soft-power control with dock detection over-ride
• SD data bypass – full FAT FS for SD access when the shimmer is docked
• Tilt/vibration sensor
• Improved plastics and enclosure

Shimmer (rev 2.0) will also be compatible with the existing Shimmer 1.3 family of products and accessories to insure easy of integration into existing Shimmer projects.

Download the PDF document to see a full Capabilities Overview.

Download the PDF document to answer any Legacy Support Questions.

To purchase the platform today, please visit our Online Store.

TEDMED 2009 was held recently, from the 27^th – 30^th of October in San Diego, California. TEDMED celebrates conversations that demonstrate the intersection and connections between all things medical and healthcare related: from personal health to public health, devices to design and Hollywood to the hospital.

Speaking at the conference Ambassador Eric Goosby, the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator for the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, urged attendees not to pursue wireless health services because they are a “shiny new technology” or because they are “innovative, creative and flashy,” but rather because, if they do improve health outcomes for patients, then they should be core tools for medical workers and global health programs.

Also speaking at the conference was Eric Dishman from Intel’s Digital Health Group, who noted the importance of “Behavioural Makers” and made particular reference to the Shimmer platform. Describing Shimmer as a small unit that fits into a pocket and monitors such attributes as hand tremor, gait and stride length. This he noted helps the understanding of how a change in a person’s daily patterns, or characteristic markers, of behaviour could be used for diagnostic purposes.

Paul Jacob’s, CEO of Qualcomm noted that ‘timing couldn’t better for introducing patients to new digital health tools’. Jacob’s demonstrating a number of wireless health monitoring devices and sensors during his presentation, however many saw the highlight to be a Cookie Monster toy that moved around the stage, fell down, and stood back up again. The toy was wearing a Shimmer which allowed for the remote monitoring of the toys activity, and also sent a prompt alert when a fall had been detected.

To read the full on article Eric Dishman’s speech at TEDMED 2009 published in the Scientific American please click here, or to read a brief overview of all the speakers mentioned, please click here.

PRESS RELEASE

Cambridge, MA October 7, 2009. Insight Diagnostics Inc (IDI) presented at the First Shimmer Technology Exchange at Harvard University.

Shimmer Research and Insight Diagnostics, Inc have partnered to bring state of the art technology for the diagnosis and treatment of soft tissue injuries into a wireless format.   IDI’s proprietary technology Electrodiagnostic Functional Assessment, EFA brings physicians and insurers an innovative non invasive way to evaluate previously elusive soft tissue injuries.  Shimmer™ is a small wireless sensor platform designed to support wearable applications. The partnership between Shimmer Research and IDI will enhance the technology for delivery of the Electrodiagnostic Functional Assessment. IDI is using Shimmer Research’s technology to make the new device most effective for diagnosis of soft tissue injuries. The new device can have profound implications for cost effective evaluations of soft tissue related injuries and can even make inroads in cardiac monitoring.

To read the full Press Release – click here.

For more information on Shimmer – click here.

We are now getting closer to a number of new interesting releases at the end of May / start of June and this quick post will be a very small introduction to some of them – mostly on the software side.

One certain new version that we will have is the ‘ Shimmer LiveDVD ‘ – which is basically a bootable DVD derivative of Ubuntu Linux which has preinstalled on it the full build environment for both TinyOS 1.x and TinyOS 2 – it is a very convenient way to have people started on the entire Shimmer and TinyOS platform in a very solid and stable form (and something that we have found very handy during our training courses – without actually having people install anything on their computer; also no direct Internet connection is required). Finally another major point is that such a bootable DVD is a kind of reference/test platform – so when something goes wrong with your Shimmer-related environment you know that on that DVD you have a way to test if the problems are related to the build environment itself, to the hardware that you are using or something else.

Since at the end of April 2009 Ubuntu 9.04 was launched we were keeping an eye on a version based on that latest distribution – but for the moment we decided to still use the better-tested 8.10 version (and eventually have 9.04 for the next LiveDVD a few months down the road) – however even based on 8.10 you will get the absolute latest version of all things involved (including for instance latest kernel patches or Firefox 3.0.10).

However the ‘ Shimmer LiveDVD ‘ is more than a bootable DVD – for maximum convenience in dealing with TinyOS on the DVD there is a (tightly compressed) image of a virtual VMware machine running the same Linux environment – but this one you can run without leaving your normal Windows environment! (you will first need to install the free VMware Player – currently at version 2.5.2).

On the DVD there is also a Windows friendly GUI (Graphical User Interface) program to write any precompiled firmware to your Shimmer device (and also a number of such precompiled programs that can be used with BioMOBIUS and other programs).

Finally two of the new things on the DVD that we will not go into much detail right now is an updated Shimmer2 target platform inside TinyOS and possibly a new beta version of BioMOBIUS v2.

We also hope to have in place the infrastructure that will allow (existing) registered Shimmer users to be able to download the ISO image for that new DVD from this web site – unfortunately while the vast majority of the content of that DVD is OpenSource (and any user is free to redistribute those parts in any way they see fit as long as that does not conflict with the license(s) involved), the DVD image itself also contains a few number of things (like the VMware Player) which can only be distributed by Shimmer-Research so the full ISO can not be redistributed in identical form.

DUBLIN, Ireland and NEW YORK, New York, July 16, 2008—

Ireland-based Realtime Technologies, a leading provider of electronic manufacturing and design services, today launched Shimmer™, a hardware research platform designed for wearable health sensing in both connected and wireless environments.

Read the full story here.