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The goal of Group 11 is to design and build a sound-oriented device to assist a child with a hearing disability throughout development.
The goal of this project is to make a hearing focused game for a child with sensorineural hearing loss. A common problem with many toys is that involve listening components is that they are not loud enough for a child with a hearing disability. The child is still able to make out some sounds, but they do not typically come to him in the manner that most people are used to. Because of this, it can be hard to distinguish the difference between common sounds. The goal is to build a game or puzzle that can be used to help the child distinguish different noises from one another.
There are similar products out there called “Sound Puzzles” that involve shapes (such as a cow, guitar, car, plane, ect.) that play a sound when a puzzle piece is properly placed on the board. There is even some specifically designed for other types of disabilities such as the “Melissa & Doug Musical Instruments Sound Puzzle” that was made for kids with autism. Unfortunately, all these puzzles have a finite amount of options for objects (about 6) and that would only be so useful for the family we are working with. Another issue with these sound puzzles is that they do not offer a volume control to make them louder. It does not seem like there are any products already out there that we can modify for the use of the family, but it is useful to try to base our design off of products that are already pretty popular.
Concept design 1 is a small 3×3 or 6×2 puzzle that is composed of the same shape blocks. The idea of this design is that the child will press a button, and the button will provide a sound that correlates to one of the images on the game board. They will then pick one of the blocks and place it into one of the slots on the board. The images would be contained in some sort of laminate or plexiglass and be interchangeable by the parents. There would also be a volume knob on the front of the board.
The first concept design relies on a matrix of square input buttons that would each correspond with a unique sound; each of these buttons would have a slit, allowing the parents to place paper images inside the buttons as they wish. Once a sound is played, and an attempted matching button is pressed, lights would indicate whether the combination of sound and button is correct. Parental controls, such as a power switch and volume knob, would also be included either on or under the base.
Our second concept design is a rectangular-shaped game board with the proposed dimensions of 12″ x 8″. It is a board with shapes cutout that will make a sound that the child is learning. When the child recognizes the sound, he will place the appropriate object in in the correct spot on the game board. The board will have a built in speaker which is controlled by a volume adjustment with special advanced loudness to assist in the child’s condition. As requested, we will have ‘velcro’ attatched to the blocks, so the objects can be updated as the child progresses in his learning.
Concept Design #3 is designed to be an interactive puzzle where the parent or therapist can tell the system what sound to play and then the child can choose from an assortment of pictures. The idea was that our product would be similar to the game Battleship in a way that the parent/therapist is facing the child choosing the sounds to play from the same assortment of pictures the child can see. This also allows the child to not be able to see what sounds the parent/therapist is choosing to play. The design also has a control deck allowing the users to control volume, recording their own sound, and allows them to play the game without a parent/therapist input. A long term goal for this design is to compact it into the smallest version of itself for easy storage and mobility.
The concept design we selected was Concept Design 1. The way we selected this design was we presented our designs to the family and allowed for feedback and what their favorite design was. Initially we were planning on taking some things from each concept design, however we were leaning towards the battleship based game design because it seems like it would be the most engaging. The most important thing is that the project meets the design specifications listed above, and we ultimately achieved this goal with the selected design.
We selected a design that will contain 6 buttons, each with the capability to interchange the sound and image associated with them. The design is a game board in which the child will push a button to hear a sound, and once the sound is played, he will push the button on the board that corresponds to the sound played. The buttons will pivot around a rod and will press down on a spring-button assembly at the bottom of the game board which will send a response back to the Arduino. The design has a speakers mounted to the top of it and will light up green or red (depending on whether the selection was correct).
We selected a design that will contain 6 buttons, each with the capability to interchange the sound and image associated with them. The design is a game board in which the child will push a button to hear a sound, and once the sound is played, he will push the button on the board that corresponds to the sound played. The buttons will pivot around a rod and will press down on a spring-button assembly at the bottom of the game board which will send a response back to the Arduino. The design has a speakers mounted to the top of it and will light up green or red (depending on whether the selection was correct).
We will do an analysis on the power required for the circuit to determine what size and how many batteries will be necessary.
We will do an analysis on the power required for the circuit to determine what size and how many batteries will be necessary.
