YouMake: A Low-Cost, Easy for Prototyping, Didactic and Generic Platform for Acquisition and Conditioning of Biomedical Signals

Abstract

The study of cell’s electric properties began in XVIII. Since then, several researchers began focusing their studies in biomedical signals, making way for today’s high precision tech for modern medicine - expensive and used by professionals. However, the emergence of new research fields in the biomedical area like monitoring of human activity and human-machine interface brought the need to measure biomedical signals through simple devices. In addition, there was a growth of the DIY (do-it-yourself) movement boosted by prototyping platforms such as Arduino and Raspberry-pi. Thus, came the idea to develop YouMake, a platform for acquisition and conditioning of biomedical signals with low cost, easy prototyping, versatile and generic. For evaluation purposes, an experimental study using YouMake with twenty-four participants was divided into two groups, the first consisting of participants with experience in the study area and the latter represented by participants with no experience. Usability and prototyping time of the participants in the prototyping of the platform for the acquisition of three biological signals were evaluated: ECG, EMG and EOG. The usability and prototyping time of the participants were evaluated in the prototyping of the platform for the acquisition of three biological signals: ECG, EMG and EOG. The results were statistically analyzed using the Shapiro-Wilk, Levene and t-student tests, which showed that there was no statistical difference between the means of the experienced and the non-experienced groups. This showed that both experienced and inexperienced people in the study have the same ease in using the platform.