Wheelchair Module control

[lightyears]

Hi, im new to the community and quite new to the pi. to start, my friend who i work for and also talk tech with has cerebral palsy and uses a electric wheelchair for all his daily uses, the chair is getting quite old and requires some work on the control modules which guide such things as speed,brakes, lights etc. We were wondering, would it be possible with the community help to use a pi to control all these features and basically upgrade his wheelchair to work on a modern standard.

it would need to do the following
Communicate with a joystick which controls speed and turning.
work off 2 12v batteries
govern lights automatically, so with a light sensor or suchlike to save switching on at night.


look forward to some reply, we are both keen to learn some new things and to change other disabled peoples outlook on there wheelchairs.

[ghans]

I think a microcontroller would give more
precision and should be enough. The Pi sounds
overkill for this task , and is a bit more delicate anyway.

The Arduino could be a good platform to prototype.

ghans

[lightyears]

may be overkill, but you dont know this guy he loves the possibiltys of upgrades and running other things. i will look into the other one though, thanks for the reply

[mac499]

Hi;

I'm a volunteer with an assistance dog charity for mobility impaired people including CP, and a lot of the clients use electric wheelchairs some of the kids chairs are awesome.

I'd wondered about what an RPi system could do; maybe an add-on bit of flexible robotics to a chair in addtion to the 'standard' controls, let alone novel input devices The sort of things you might get on a high end specification car.

Like the auto lights ON\OFF,
An "Excuse Me" buzzer or a simple speech generator.
Reversing sensors
Tilt Sensor
MP3 player\Skype in WiFi Hot spots
A simple powered arm to swing the luggage rucksack from the back of the chair into reach..
A pair of Pis one on the chair one at home to control simple door locking\entry.
(Robotic Nerf Guns for shifting us able-bodies out of the way... )


Cheers MAC

[ghans]

There is a reason for those systems being expensive ...
programmers and electrical engineers are usually paid.
If you can do that all yourself , why not.
But i'd seriously consider a tablet first.

ghans

[mac499]

There is a reason for those systems being expensive ...
programmers and electrical engineers are usually paid.
If you can do that all yourself , why not.
But i'd seriously consider a tablet first.

ghans

Very true ,
but then a year ago a bunch of enthusiasts who are also very skillful engineers came up with a $35 computer. so that's a start.

I can see how a tablet would be useful as a UI device , but wouldn't you still need a RPi\Arduino type device to control hardware ??

Cheers MAC

[ghans]

Amarino and the IOIO board definitely look like interesting
projects. I think they're easier to realise than a solution
which requires very skillfull engineers.


ghans

[bensimmo]

Did you make anything in the end?
Quite interested.