Smart Brain Training using MAX25405 Evaluation Kit - Blog #1

Hello everyone, Firstly, Happy to be a part of the Experimenting with Gesture Sensors Challenge.

A Quick Intro

Hi, I’m Rahul, a Computer Vision Engineer who loves building embedded products. I spend most of my day making embedded projects and products. I've worked with popular dev boards such as Arduino, Raspberry Pi, NVIDIA Jetson, Intel AI, Google Coral, etc. I’d love to combine my passion for AI, deep learning, and robotics with my computer skills to continue building personalized AI products for people.

You can watch my previous projects on YouTube.

I would like to give an insight into what we will be testing and how it would make an impact in the day to day life. 

What are we building?

I'll be using the MAX25405 Eval kit with Raspberry Pi to make an interactive brain training game that involves hand gestures. The project is basically a logic game to train your brain's memory and improve attention. While playing our brain games, you not only have a lot of fun, but also gradually improve your cognitive skills that include memory, attention, and concentration. Puzzles & other game-based activities involve gestures such as hand swipe, finger/hand rotation, air click, proximity detection, and linger-to-click. This is where our MAX25405 comes into action. 

I received my kit a few days back and this is a short description of what it contains.

The application circuit operates by illuminating the user’s hand with a precision-controlled IR light source and measuring the reflected signal with the MAX25405’s 6x10 (60-pixel) IR sensor array. The four-LED IR light source is PWM controlled with external FETs from the MAX25405’s onboard FET driver. The return signal is analyzed with an embedded microcontroller that interprets the gestures.

The Kit has a MAX32620FTHR Microcontroller, MAX25405 Sensor Board, and Interface Shield Board that connects the microcontroller and the MAX25405 sensor, Ribbon Cable, and 3.3V Power adapter. 

Below is a simple block diagram to understand the conceptual working.