Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff

Sprint Day 0: An Open Source ventilator project you can believe in.

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Enginerding:
Hi, I'm Dan, an American. I'm no great engineer, but I'm one heck of a planner and people organizer.  I've been involved in Emergency Medicine for 19 years as an Army 68 Whiskey, Tactical Medic/TC3, EMT-Advanced; 3 years serving and leading in combat (I also have an Anesthetist who can advise on ventilator technicals).  I don't have the skill to build a ventilator by myself, none of us do.  But this eevBlog community does.  Personally, I like great challenges, hard work, and the Apollo 13 story gives me wood.

Engineering wood.

The situation:

1st World countries like the US, Australia, the UK, France, Germany, etc are probably going to be OK on ventilators.  However, the developing world, India, Brazil, etc, could see severe shortages, and utter devastation.

I've searched hi and lo, looking for a ventilator project that has promise, but I haven't found anything that goes past raw concepts, or idealism w/o necessary skill.  I can promise you there will be none of that here -- we'll hit of our marks.

If you're interested in this undertaking, vote in the poll -- it's an aggressive project for strong-spirited individuals, it's not for everyone, even though everyone can contribute.   I've set a time limit of 24 hours on the poll, feel free to comment below with your hard technical skills and an intro.  If 20 people join, we'll quickly form the steering and planning committees and move forward with answering the first critical question:

Does a fully operational open source ventilator already exist w/ a suitable BOM for the developing world?

motivation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6F6MzMT2g8


Enginerding:
About me:  I served a few tours in combat in Iraq, after that I went to a large state university where I graduated first in my class academically with a 4.0 GPA in Comp Sci.  I'm not an engineer by trade.

I fairly rate myself on the following skills:

Wheatstone bridge/pressure sensors:  3/5
small signal amplification, instrumentation amplifiers:  3/5
ADCs: 2/5
microcontrollers, Arduino IDE: 2/5
Power supply design: 2/5
CAD: 2/5

TopLoser:
Not yet another bloody ventilator related post?!

I can’t get my breath.

ArthurDent:
Please no.

ArthurDent:
Interestingly I got a PM to my above post that read in part: “Hi Arthur.  I'd like to ask you to remove your post.  It serves no positive purpose, and purposely sets a negative tone against a charitable purpose.”

After a moment of thought I’ve decided not to remove my proper response and I will go further in explaining my reply. You just don’t wake up one day and say: “I think I’ll build an extremely complex and expensive piece of equipment called a ventilator.” While your intentions may be laudable if you don’t have the knowledge to carry out such an extreme undertaking and you’re trying to get volunteers on an internet forum (no matter how talented they may be) to join you in this quest, you just shouldn’t do it. If you can use your skills as “one heck of a planner and organizer” to eventually gain the knowledge, get some really talented professionals in the field, and get some financial backers with lots of cash, you won’t need to ask us for support. What will be telling is if you can write up a proposal that can persuade engineers and big finance professionals to join and support you-that would mean something, but you are far from that point.  So my reply is still, respectfully, “please no.” 

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