Powerchair: A dad hacks a wheelchair for his disabled 2-year-old son

http://www.hackingsma.com/?p=257

by Aissen • 13 years ago

265 33 13 years ago

itry• 13 years ago

Pure Love

bbayer• 13 years ago

I really burst into tears when I first saw it. This is really fascinating how a dad worked hard to make his child every day life easier. I can understand his effort as father of disabled child and very proud of achievement he made. It is hard to believe how hard to reach resources for a disabled child. Some European countries has very good regulations about supporting disabled children thus equipment is very expensive. It is impossible to effort for families with low income and social benefits which are provided especially from government agencies is a must.

nova• 13 years ago

Some European countries has very good regulations about supporting disabled children thus equipment is very expensive.

Regulations, at least the well intentioned ones, try to avoid accidents from ill-designed products. The downside is expensive or never made technology needed by a small number of patients.

After all, dead or injured children due to faulty machinery are very noticeable, whereas unassisted ones (because the technology doesn't exist) is just "a fact of life", and invisible to most (except their parents). "What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen", again.

Same with medicines.

We need a two-tier system: 1) certified and expensive, and 2) best-effort and on your own, but cheap.

(And don't let me get started on patents)

ibsathish• 13 years ago

Epitome of Father-Child relationship. Moved to tears. Thanks for sharing.

DanBC• 13 years ago

Amazing write up.

It does make me a bit grumpy to see things like SnapChat being offered $3bn, but nothing like this ever getting that kind of funding. That's a lot of engineering and manufacturing that isn't being done.

Even the boy with the formula one arm had to raise funds himself. (With help, but no funding, from Mercedes. But the engineering they gave is very cool.) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/motorsport/formulaone/87006...

aram2• 13 years ago

I completely agree; it's the same thing as with entertainment/sports industry. Football/basketball players are paid obscene amounts of money, while what they do does not have much real value.

Thanks for sharing the link.

elmuchoprez2• 13 years ago

"Football/basketball players are paid obscene amounts of money, while what they do does not have any real value."

Serious question: Do you consider entertainment to have a real value for society?

gdilla• 13 years ago

as far as society is concerned, professional athletes do have value - that value is realized in the form of ticket prices, memorabilia, endorsements, etc. And you can measure that in dollars, obviously. Keep in mind, these are professionals. There's only like 700-800 of them per professional league, and their athletic careers span 0-20 years. You could similarly do that calculation for hollywood too. That's the supply side. The demand side: it provides joy; it's entertaining, it's emotional, and fun. People pay for that, for the most part. Of course some people don't feel it;s worth paying for. that's fine too. But there's enough of the payers to sustain industries.

noonespecial2• 13 years ago

"Why do professional athletes make so much money when...?" is the wrong question to ask.

"Why do people pay so much money for a small bit of entertainment for themselves when there is so much need in the world?" is a better one. This brings us right back to some uncomfortable facts about human nature.

CalumJEadie• 13 years ago

It does make me a bit grumpy to see things like SnapChat being offered $3bn

Supply and demand. The value that Snapchat provides to individuals and advertisers is tiny but huge in aggregate. There just isn't the same volume of people with conditions like Alejandro's and the variety of problems people face make the economics especially challenging within a free market.

However, I feel we're at a really exciting point in history. With open source software and hardware, the work that a single person like Alejandro's dad does can be provide value and spread like neither before. Advances in tech that seem to provide only minimal value to us allow for engineers to be trained, gain the skills and have the know how to make a significant difference to people like Alejandro.

The challenge is how can we channel as much of the value and tech created by the free market into problems that the free market struggles to solve, like disability and assistive technology. Open question!

Kliment2• 13 years ago

Just a random offer, I don't mean to hijack the thread - I do electronics and robotics design for a living. I will happily help anyone who has a need like this for cost of materials or less, the result will be open source hardware. If you or someone you know could use help with a similar project, contact me at kliment at 0xfb.com or on IRC (I'm Kliment on the freenode network).

mmmaaaxxx• 13 years ago

I also do electronics for a living and dabble in robotics at the local hackerspace. Would love to work on an open-source project like this. Let me now if you get something going. Max at mmmaaa.xxx

stbtrax• 13 years ago

From the comments of the father's blog there seems to be an organization for pairing up people with skills to people with needs: http://www.tetrasociety.org/

Kliment2• 13 years ago

Thanks, though it appears to be North America only, and I'm in Europe.

mctx• 13 years ago

I'd love to help out too (mechatronics eng) - email in profile. I'm in Perth, Australia

el_shayan• 13 years ago

Just imagine what a Gene Hacker Dad can do...

lifeisstillgood• 13 years ago

This is where the value of Stem educations come in. 50 years ago you could pick up enough mechanics to fix your car, enough electronics as a hobbyist. today you need to start at 14 building / making at school like we did in woodcraft and metalwork lessons - otherwise when you are a dad and need those making skills, they just aren't there

but like everyone else on the thread - massive kudos - that's what dads are for.

noonespecial2• 13 years ago

In case you don't know what "MAX" is:

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/71544521BDE34FFB86256...

Its something I'd like really like to see an open source version of make it into the Arduino universe.

pt• 13 years ago

I would like to contribute money for Alejandro (as I do not have the hacking ability/skills to contribute anything meaningful for the tech). Is there a way to contribute money for Alejandro and his dad?

brianmcdonough• 13 years ago

At one point in the video he seemed to be looking at the camera, saying perhaps, thanks for being an awesome dad.

BTW, I think the reason why there's so much talk about entertainment in the comments is because people feel guilty for pursuing simple pleasure when you have pursued something so noble by comparison. What they don't know is how much satisfaction you must have derived from this project. You have achieved something not many of us have, something noble and satisfying. There should be a website for noble stories like yours, but I'm afraid there wouldn't be enough content ;)

Thank you for sharing your inspiring story.

Powerchair: A dad hacks a wheelchair for his disabled 2-year-old son

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