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A Tourettes Syndrome Simulator

Former Member

Hi Ben,

 

I have Tourettes and have had an idea to both raise awareness and make money for charity. It also involves an electronic project. I want to make a Tourettes Simulator, the basic idea is to use electrodes like on a Tens/EMS machine to genrate muscle stimulation randomly and added to this would be a speaker to generate vocal tics.

 

I have set up a Just Giving page for Tourettes Action at https://www.justgiving.com/account/your-pages/J2Tmax

 

My plan is to challenge the mis-conception that having this syndrome is cool and give friends, family and more the chance to experience some of the difficulties sufferers face like going shopping or to see a movie.

 

The wearers would become part of my just giving team and would be sponsered to wear the device and record videos of the difficulties they face while doing so.

 

I have looked into this and my first thoughts were to use a Raspberry Pi, this would give the option of having a web server to upload audio clips to from a mobile and the ability to change the settings to either increase or decrease tic frequency. For the EMS a think the only option is to build a few circuits using a 555 timer. This would allow the tics to be controlled by the 555. I found a scematic here http://www.electroschematics.com/2083/electronic-muscle-stimulator/

 

After researching I believe we need to be between the 80hz and 120hz range to cause the quick muscle fibres to trigger.

 

I recorded my initial thoughts on this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbnXD4JtVsE

My blog is http://j2tmax.co.uk

 

I hope you can help, I plan to do this project no matter what

Parents

  • I would be very surprised if the voice simulator would be needed, I'm sure a Tens/EMS type device would cause a few obscenities to slip out of anyone, and from experience I personally notice the tics long before I hear any obscenities but through working in security I find I'm always vigilant and notice things others don't. What a great idea though. If only there was a device to help people understand Asperger's and the other forms of Autism from the spectrum.

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  • I would be very surprised if the voice simulator would be needed, I'm sure a Tens/EMS type device would cause a few obscenities to slip out of anyone, and from experience I personally notice the tics long before I hear any obscenities but through working in security I find I'm always vigilant and notice things others don't. What a great idea though. If only there was a device to help people understand Asperger's and the other forms of Autism from the spectrum.

Children
  • in reply to CrazyFace

    Thanks Mark,

     

    I think the whole idea is to put the wearer in a state of anxiety caused by them not knowing when a tic is going to happen whether it is vocal or physical. I had a further thought to make the user wear headphone (not obvious ones) and then make it a 50/50 chance of whether the vocal tic was audible or just in their headphones. This would be to make them understand that not all tics are visible and that sufferers are not always sure if they are noticed or heard by others.

     

    I have a lot support from friends and family so this is a project I will be exploring further.

     

    I agree it would be great if we had devices that could give people a better understanding of Autism and Asperger's. These issues obviously effect the individuals own perception of their surroundings, it is hard to cause this level of confusion in a person but you could effect elements like make a device that translates sentences others say into another language but this would be one element of many that can affect suffers. Another idea would be to use VR and create a game where facial expressions speech and the surroundings could all be made to be confusing for the wearer like a happy person could actually be angry with you but you don't understand what he is saying properly. The objective in the game could be simple like put a ball in the square pen but really it is the cone that needs to go in the circle pen etc.