M-HEAL Life Lamp Project

Kickoff Meeting - 9/27/2011

2011-09-27T21:06:00.000-04:00

Tonight we had our first official meeting for the new semester. Jack, Mike, Oliver, and Bilal joined us for the first time. Members present: Steve, Dan, and Elliot.

Here's an outline of the meeting:

I. Introduction: Gave prospective members an overview of the project and where we're headed during a Q&A session.

II. Short-term goals for this semester

Redesign lamp head: new LEDs, focusing, etc. Jack's Engin 100 group might take on the project
More stable base
Circuitry
Find LEDs with narrower beam angle: Mike knows where to get them
Portability & Modular design
Recruit faculty advisor specifically for the Life Lamp Team
Modify previous grant proposals: We should look into working with Centricycle Team for some insight since they have some experience

III. Trip Opportunities

World Medical Relief (WMR): Those that are interested may travel abroad with WMR with the surgical lamp. It will most likely be Philippines, but we need to contact WMR for more info.
Nicaragua: Next Summer - We could collaborate again with the Maternal Health Team.

IV. Meeting time: Our regular meeting time will be Tuesdays at 7 PM @ LBME for this semester.

V. Next week: We will start working on a new prototype.

Elliot

2011 Nicaragua Trip Update

2011-09-23T01:13:00.000-04:00

This is what the lamp looked like right before the trip.

Here's a brief summary of the trip to Nicaragua (Summer 2011).

1. District Hospital of Esteli, Nicaragua: We assembled the lamp in front of the technicians and officials of the hospital. Once the lamp was put together, we demonstrated its use and various features. In general, the lamp was well-received and people were highly interested. They even took pictures of the lamp!

Is there a need for improved surgical lamps? Yes. More efficient lamps are needed (v.s. conventional incandescent lamps).
Is need constant or sporadic? The lamp we have here works well sometimes, but is intermittent. Bulbs don’t last long (200-300 hrs) from the overhead source. We tried to extend life by adding protection/insulation. We have electrical energy but quality of the lamp is a problem. Power also gets interrupted, and we tried to fix fluctuations from power surges. For example, this morning, we lost power for three hours (happens about once a month), but we do have two back-up electrical generators (can support everything but X-ray) that can each supply 72 hours worth of power.
Hospital does not have any type of mobile solar systems, but that could be potentially helpful in different areas.
Hospital's top priorities for a surgical light source: white light, cool, low energy.
They really liked the ~12 in. diameter spot and how we worked on shadow control.
Ideal/desired battery life is ~12 hrs.
They liked how we used PVC to narrow beam angle.
They suggested the wooden base made of something else. Keep it light, but some weight would be good for balance and stability.
They suggested lamp head open like an umbrella mechanism to adjust focus...however, the current setup is good enough for minor surgeries.
Make it consistent with different assembly tools (for instance, be able to assemble the lamp with 2-3 different tools).
Most complicated issue for the hospital is to buy and attach LEDs, otherwise the lamp can be built there.

2. Sacuanjoche Clinic in Matagalpa, Nicaragua: We visited a small private clinic that visits isolated rural villages routinely to provide health services. We also traveled to one of the villages, Santa Ana, with the clinic. During the visit, we experienced a power outtage that delayed medical exams. See where the lamp comes in? Here are some of the feedbacks:

Change wood base...perhaps to a tripod base.
Be able to focus the light.
Adjustable (extendable) arm.
All parts are readily available in Nicaragua says Dr. Armando (head of the clinic).
Increased portability: this was the clinic's particular interest since they frequently visit rural villages with their medical equipments.

Elliot

3/29 Lamp Update

2011-03-29T21:27:00.002-04:00

Today's meeting was just a planning meeting. Next week we will begin work on the second lamp head.

Assignments for the week:
Steve: buy metal strips, a switch, and sticky squares
Elliot: buy cell phone batteries
Melissa: pick out LEDs
Liz: Talk to BlueLab about the generator (probably by emailing the officers)
Dan: Talk to CGH about people to interview about the lamp, talk to Aileen (aileenhs@umich.edu) about getting into contact with Frank Andersen and other MDs.

Here's a tentative schedule for the next two months:
4/5: Start working on lamp head #2, wire up the cell phone batteries
4/12: Finish lamp head #2
4/19: Finals, probably no meeting
4/26: Make contact with UM surgeons to give us feedback on the lamp, work on getting the lamp to run off wall power
5/3: Finish getting the lamp to run off wall power
5/10: Internal testing
5/17: External testing with UM surgeons
5/24: Make modifications as recommended by the surgeons
Early June: send lamp to Nicaragua

Here's two links to the surgical lamp that won the Australian design award:
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s3158339.htm
http://student.designawards.com.au/application_detail.jsp?status=3&applicationID=9657

Because I forgot to send them out last week, here are the interview questions:
1. Have you seen a need for improved surgical lighting?
2. Is the need sporadic or constant? What is the cause of the need? If sporatic, how long and how often?
3. Where does surgical lighting rank in the list of priorities?
4. How much do you think clinics/hospitals would be willing to spend on a grid-independent surgical lamp?
5. Have you witnessed a surgery that had to be stopped due to inadequate surgical lighting? What was the result?
6. What manufacturing capabilities are available?
7. What batteries are locally available? LEDs? Used bike parks? Cost?
8. How often does the power go out for? For how long?
9. What are the most common procedures requiring surgical lamps? Where are they performed?
10. Do you see the lamp being used for anything other than surgery?
11. What is currently being used for surgical lighting? What about during blackouts? How well does this work?
12. Do you think a grid-independent surgical lamp would be a cost-effective way to improve the quality of care?
13. How important is portability for surgical lighting?
14. Are you interested in helped us to design/implement a surgical lamp?
15. What other equipment/supplies are needed for surgical lamps to be useful? Anesthesia? Disposables?
16. Do you have any questions or comments? Are there any questions that you think we should have asked that we didn’t?

Some Lit Search Findings

2011-03-18T17:02:00.002-04:00

I worked on a lit search regarding the availability and quality of surgical lighting, and while I didn't find any studies explicitly reporting the information we were looking for, I did find some interesting papers. I'm including the name and some of the important information from them; they're all available from google scholar or through the university.

Quantifying Surgical and Anesthetic Availability at Primary Health Facilities in Mongolia
David A. Spiegel • Shelly Choo • Meena Cherian •Sergelen Orgoi • Beat Kehrer • Raymond R. Price •Salik Govind

Not much info, but in the table towards end 11% reported to have access to lighting, eg flashlight, surgical, etc

A protocol for safe anasthesia for cleft lip and palate surgery in developing countries
S. C. Hodges, A. M. Hodges

"The majority of hospitals in Uganda are severely underfunded and understaffed. Reliable electricity is unusual. In some centres there is no running water and the majority of hospitals have no oxygen. Many of the operating theatres are small and cramped with poor lighting and no recovery room"

Quantifying surgical capacity in Sierra Leone: a guide for improving surgical care
T. Peter Kingham, MD; Thaim B. Kamara, MD; Meena N. Cherian, MD; Richard A. Gosselin, MD; Meghan Simkins, BA; Chris Meissner, BA; Lynda Foray-Rahall, MD; Kisito S. Daoh, MD; Soccoh A. Kabia, MD; Adam L. Kushner, MD, MPH

-info on availibility and periodicity of electricity

-"Even when electricity was available, lighting was
a problem, given there were approximately 6 individual lightbulbs that worked in all of the dome lights throughout Sierra Leone. Most operating rooms subsisted with a portable light or sunlight."

-hospitals in the capital have been receiving electrical power at an increasingly steady rate

-"The 5 other hospitals surveyed depended on generator power, but owing to the scarcity and cost of fuel, patients’ families were sometimes required to provide the necessary fuel to power generators during surgical procedures."

-"In addition, basic infrastructure, such as lighting in the operating room, is an example of a small investment that can have an enormous effect. The lightbulbs required in Sierra Leone, for example, were found to cost less than US $0.50 at a factory in China."

Lamp Head/Thesis Review

2011-03-18T16:44:00.006-04:00

Hey guys,

Below is a picture of our next-prototype lamp head, in case you didn't get a chance to see it:

Also, I looked over Abigail's thesis for background information and this is what I found:

She visited 3 regional hospitals and ten health clinics in Ghana/Uganda, and from these trips claims that "due to the unreliability of electrical energy there have been cases of deaths in surgery and delivery wards.” She then shares several anecdotes concerning complications caused by surgical lighting failure during power outages, but has no numbers or data to show how often this is actually happening.

She also claims that the electrification rate (percent of population that has electricity) in Uganda is 10%, and states that this is similar to most low HDI countries, where electrification rates range from 2-50%, with reliability at or below 50%.

This graph below was also contained in her thesis. I am unsure of its source, but it shows how often power outages occur in Uganda, and could definitely be helpful when we are looking for more quantitative data to prove our cause.

-Melissa

NCIIA Grant Application

2011-03-15T22:28:00.002-04:00

Here's the last NCIIA grant application we sent in, just in case you ever want to use it as a reference.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~stvdwtt/NCIIA_Grant_Application.pdf

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~stvdwtt/marketing_schematic.pdf

Lamp Update 3/15

2011-03-15T22:27:00.001-04:00

Hey guys,
First Jack and Melissa gave some quick updates on research they've found relating to surgical lighting in developing countries. This info should be up on the blog soon. Next, we a look at the light the lamp head puts out. From a completely unprofessional viewpoint it seems to be bright enough and was able to (dimly) light up an entire LBME classroom. Next, Elliot and Mike went to the Wilson Center to attach the lamp head to the lamp frame with a pair of L-brackets. The process ended up being more difficult than anticipated, so we'll finish that up next week. Liz, Melissa, and I made a list of new survey questions (included at the bottom of this email) which have been sent to the survey team. Next, we talked about the poster and changed the categories to Background, Lamp Design, Implementation, and Future Work.

Registration for the global health symposium is due on Monday, March 21st, don't forget to register if you plan on going.

Tasks for the Week:
Steve: Find out when M-HEAL is going to WMR next, write the Future Work part of the poster
Melissa: Post lamp need info, write the Implementation part of the poster, talk to Mike Lee about when Wilson Center trainings will be
Liz: Write Lamp Design part of the poster
Jack: Post lamp need info, write the Background part of the poster
Elliot: Compile the poster over the weekend
Pat: Write the abstract for the poster
Mike: Begin work on a CAD drawing of the lamp

Please send your portion of the poster to Elliot by 7pm on Friday. Elliot, send the compiled poster to the group by Sunday at 7pm for feedback.

Let me know if you have any comments or questions or if I forgot to include something.

Best,
Steve

----------------------------------------------------------

Survey Questions:
1). Describe what you use for surgical lighting. What procedures do you use it for?
2). In these case of a power outage, what surgical lighting do you use?
3). What have been the complications due to inadequate surgical lighting (including doe to power outages)? How frequent are these complications?
4). How much would you be willing to spend on a surgical lamp that continues to work during power outages? $___________
5). How high of a priority is surgical lighting that continues to work during power outages in terms of equipment needs?
__ Top 3
__ Top 5
__ Top 10
__ Higher than 10th

Ugandan Technical Schools/ Lamp pictures

2011-02-18T14:49:00.005-05:00

Below are links to two different directories of Ugandan technical schools that I found when we were talking about possible schools to approach last meeting. They are both basically online collections of information about technical school in Uganda, including names, locations, and contact information. If we decide we want to go ahead and speak directly to schools, this would be a great resource to find potential schools to contact.

http://www.btvet-uganda.org/

http://www.ugaprivi.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=56

I also went in to LBME today and took a bunch of pictures of the lamp to be used in our flyer. Below are a few of the better shots, but if you want a copy of all of them, email me and I will send them to you!

-Melissa Learman

2/15/2011 Meeting Summary

2011-02-16T18:44:00.001-05:00

Here's the lamp update for the week:

I. This Week's Meeting:
Yesterday we discussed our plan of action for finding a partner organization. We will update our brochure and then talk to Moses Lee for feedback on our brochure and pitch. After meeting with Moses we'll start contacting NGOs and trade schools. Our current model is to partner with trade schools and have them incorporate lamp building into their curriculum. This provides them with some additional revenue for the school and solves the sparse need problem. We found that there is a good directory of trade schools in Uganda. Pat and Liz worked on the generator and found that it generates slightly more power than expected. Liz updated us on her meeting with the EECS prof (details on the blog).

As a result of feedback during the general body meeting, we are going to try to build our lamp frame out of a single bike.

The main things that need to be fixed in the brochure are:
- mention more than just Africa as our target
- talk about technical school partnerships
- change hand-crank generator to bicycle generator

II. Action Items:
Melissa: Take pictures of the lamp with a mock head and counterweight; post Ugandan technical school directory to the blog
Mike D: Read the relevant sections of Abigail's thesis and post a summary to the blog (include technical info, location info, partner info, etc)
Dan: Update the brochure
Steve: Set up a meeting with Moses Lee
Pat: Do generator calculations
Liz: Talk to BlueLab about their bike generator
Jack: Calculate the specs we want for LEDs and look for some matching ones online

III. Abigail's Thesis:
Here's a link to Abigail's thesis: http://mirlyn.lib.umich.edu/Record/007294554.

Also, here's a link to her website (which has some relevant stuff): http://www.empowerdesign.com/

IV. Next Week:
Next week we'll be meeting at 8pm in the LBME project room. Some of the time will probably be spent in the Wilson Center putting together lamp heads.

Meeting with Professor Hofmann

2011-02-16T14:47:00.010-05:00

Hey everyone,

Some ideas for editing our current generator:

Using a hallow core rather than solid steel
Moving the core closer to the magnets
Rearranging the magnet orientation so that as a south pole passes one end of the core, a north pole passes the other end. (1st diagram)
Eliminating a core and changing the orientation of the wire (2nd diagram) spiraling the wire vertical rather than horizontally. However if more than one coil is used, such as in the 2nd diagram (a coil is represented by the red spirals), the direction of winding the coil must be alternated.

For the shake light idea this was the general design the professor advised...

This is a DC device, so it wouldn't need to be rectified like the bicycle design.

I also estimated the number of coils used on the current generator to be about 3132. The current wire is also 26 mm gauge magnet wire.

-Liz

Notes from the 2/8 meeting

2011-02-15T15:41:00.001-05:00

Business:
goal price under $100
want idea of battery life
target brightness around 800 lumens

Lamp Head:
real surgical lamps are ~2,600 lumens - ours doesn't need to be so bright
we should try to get our head to be big - close to 20" to reduce shadows
need LEDs with smaller beam angle although we can use these for an initial prototype
should try bike rim, pot, and fan cage

Generator:
Waveform looks decent
lots of noise
connections need to be tightened up

Next week:
start working on three heads
put new rectifier on he generator
glue magnets on the generator
maybe make the generator stand stronger

Action Items:
Dan: call dad about surgical light, look for NGOs
Jack: look for NGOs
Pat: get a fan cage and a pot
Melissa: look up cellphone battery life (for at least a couple different models of phone), talk to Mike Lee about training
Elliot: post article online, take pictures of the current lamp prototype for the general body meeting
Mike: Get an estimate of the power one can generate from the foot pump generator
Steve: work on ppt for the general body meeting next week, get former MBA team members in touch with Dan
Liz: Get developing country bike statistics (cost, availability, etc)

Possible Non-Profits

2011-02-13T18:49:00.002-05:00

Here are some nonprofits that are possibilities for getting in contact with. I tried to look for ones with characteristics that we talked about in the meeting. I'm including a brief summary along with links to each of these pages, if people want to look at it and give some input.

International Medical Corps:
http://www.internationalmedicalcorps.org/Page.aspx?pid=183

-Work in Africa, Middle East, and Asia
-Focus on community-based health care
-Emphasize training and education in both medical and non-medical fields
-Recruit most (96%) of their staff from the local community

MAP International
http://www.map.org/

-Christian organization working in Africa, Latin America, and Asia
-Provide medicine and disaster relief
-"seek to promote the Total Health of the communities we serve through the identification, training, equipping, and supporting of community leaders"

PCI
http://www.projectconcern.org/

-Work in Latin America, Asia, and Africa
-Active in HIV/AIDS and infectious disease prevention and treatment, but also emphasize economic empowerment and community based health care

Project CURE
http://www.projectcure.org/

-Medical supply and equipment distributor
-Very widespread distribution route

SHARE Africa
http://shareafrica.org/

-"Foster and promote health care education, research, advances in the health field, and the growth and availability of quality healthcare services"
-"Coordinate and support activities of not-for-profit organizations engaged in the betterment of mankind"
-Focus on sustainable projects based on community involvement
-Ship and distribute medical supplies as well

Most of the groups that I linked here are ones that have a focus on creating jobs within the local community. There are quite a few nonprofits out there that are focused more on medical equipment and supply shipment and distribution, but I thought that the ones I included here may be more specific to what we were looking for. These are just ones that I've found and I think are worth looking into, so if anyone has any more to add, please do so

-Jack

Conventional Surgical Lamp Specs

2011-02-10T18:53:00.000-05:00

Here's the link to the Steris article I was talking about:

http://www.steris.com/media/PDF/support/education/StudyGuides/M1722%20Lighting%20the%20Way%20to%20Surgery%20SG%203%207-10.pdf

Some of the key specs:

- Surgical luminaire should produce between 40,000 and 160,000 lux
- Pattern size should be a min diameter of 6" to a max diameter of 12"
- Luminaires with diameters greater than 20" offer best shadow control
- Intended working distance (focal length): 39" (100% luminance)
- Desirable working range: 30" - 50"
- Close distance where illuminance is 20%: 24"
- Far distance where illuminance is 20%: 60"
- Depth of field: 36" (distance from 24" to 60")

Some pictures I found online that might give us an idea...

images from Steris.com

image from http://www.faqs.org/photo-dict/phrase/3395/surgical-lamp.html

- Elliot -

Meeting with Professor Hofmann

2011-02-09T13:22:00.002-05:00

Hey everyone,

Sorry I didn't make it to the last meeting. So I emailed the professor and I scheduled a meeting with him for this Thursday at 11:30, his office is in the EECS building. I will post his office number as soon as I find out. Sorry for the inconvenience and late notice. I'd appreciate anybody who can come :) But if not I totally understand.

Thanks,
Liz

2/3 Lamp Update

2011-02-03T22:51:00.001-05:00

Hi everybody,
Here's this week's lamp update:

I. Meeting Summary:
Today Mike Dicenso joined us for the first time and told us about his idea to use a "shake light" type generator for the lamp powered by a foot pump. The engin 100 team actually initially wanted to have a foot pump design, but ended up going with the pedal design due to time constraints. This has the advantages that it probably would be easier to build than the pedal generator and could more easily be located in the operating room if the battery was running low during a surgery. The overall efficiency of this method and how well it scales up are unknown. We will be contacting an EECS prof. who is an expert on generators (and is currently teaching a generator class) to hear his advice. We also tested one of the LEDs that we got from ATC. Mike and Elliot's star-filled vision can testify to how bright they are. We just hooked it up to one of the power supplies in the project room. The LED has an angle of about 100 degrees so the spot size is much bigger than the 6" at 36" that we're looking for, but judging by how bright it is, 8 of them seem like they should be bright enough. If we do want to shrink the spot size, we'll have to design some kind of reflector assembly.

II. Action Items:
Elliot: Find FDA surgical lamp specs
Liz: Find out when the EECS prof is available and set up a meeting time
Mike D.: Post sketches of the shake light generator to the blog
Dan: Read over the material I sent you
Steve: Figure out what funding we have this semester

III. Next Week:
Our next meeting will be at our normal time, Tuesday at 8pm in the LBME project room (right after the M-HEAL general body meeting). First we'll start with a discussion of where we want the lamp to go from an implementation/business perspective. Then we'll break off into two groups with one group checking out the waveforms from the current generator prototype and one group starting to build a prototype lamp head with the new LEDs.

IV. Stuff Coming Up:
The lamp team will be presenting at the M-HEAL general body meeting two meetings from now. Development day is a day-long event where project teams set aside the day for M-HEAL in order to get a ton of work done. We keep you well fed, it's a good way to get to know other people in M-HEAL, and all the teams get a chance to get feedback from other M-HEAL members. Development day is scheduled for March 12th, so mark your calendars now. It will probably run from 10am to 7pm. The NCIIA grant proposal is due on May 6th. We've been competitive for this $20,000 grant in the past and have been told that with a more detailed business plan we should win it.

V. Brightness Units:
As per usual, we got tripped up by the proper units for describing how bright something is. Here's two wikipedia pages explaining how the units work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photometry_(optics)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometry

Don't forget to post the work from your action item on the blog. If you have any questions shoot me an email.

Steve

Generator Report

2011-02-01T00:09:00.004-05:00

Here's a link to the entirety of the generator report:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~stvdwtt/FinalReportV7.docx

Lamp Head Designs

2011-01-31T00:11:00.002-05:00

Hey guys,

Here are some of the designs I came up with. Any suggestions/ideas??

- Elliot -

LED Specs from the manufacturer:

CREE High Power - Tao source of an electronic agent. CREE High Power Products:

1.cree high power led Q5 is white, the color temperature :5700-7000K (WC, WD, WF, WG) Model: XREWHT-L1-Q5 cree led warm white temperature :2600-3700K, warm white natural :3700-5000K, other colors, red, green, blue, yellow. Model: XRE, XRC, XPE, XPC, MCE series.
2. Luminous flux of up to 114LM / W.
3. The normal working current: 350mA-700mA, 700mA at work when the flux is 1.65 times the work of 350mA maximum support, 1000mA
4. Typical voltage 3.2V (350Ma), 3.5V (700mA)
5. CLASS II,> 2000V
6. Typical viewing angle 90 °, 110 °, 115 °
7.1000 is less than small-time decline 0.5% (350mA, Ta = 25 degrees,)
8.50000 small-time decline of less than 30% (350mA, Ta = 25 degrees,)
9. Meet the ROHS requirements.
10. Thermal resistance within the lowest in the industry: 8 ℃ / W
11. The world's leading JEDEC standards for pre-test
12. Can be reflow line-JEDEC, J-STD-020C standard,
13. Cooling section is not electrically charged.
14. To provide tailor-made aluminum plate (special specifications) tailor-made, (ie, zone plate) LED reflow processing and other supporting services.
15. Application: LED lamps, automotive lighting, stage lighting, mobile phone backlight, architectural lighting, solar lighting, military flashlight; to provide tailor-made aluminum plate (special specifications) tailor-made, (ie, zone plate) LED reflow processing and other support services .

Generator Report

2011-01-26T12:51:00.001-05:00

Below is the executive summary from our final report for the generator. I am unsure on how to attach the entire report, which including the appendices and table of contents is about 45 pages long. I have it in both Microsoft word and pdf format. If anyone knows how to upload a pdf or word document please let me know. I can also email it to people individually.

-Liz

The purpose of this report is to present our findings regarding our manually powered generator design for charging cellphone batteries to M-Heal, the student organization we collaborated with. This report presents our prototype design and prototype tests. Because our prototype design did not generate enough electricity to charge the cellphone batteries, our report also discusses changes that should be made to our generator design in order to successfully charge cellphone batteries.

M-Heal had previously designed a surgical lamp which operated using cellphone batteries in order to provide reliable lighting in Ugandan operating rooms. Currently, the cellphone batteries must be charged using electricity from a power grid; unfortunately, Uganda’s power grids are unreliable. Consequently, a surgeon can be left without lighting during surgery.

Our solution was to design a manually powered generator that could charge the ten cellphone batteries. As part of our task, we followed the criteria established by M-Heal as well as criteria we devised after considering the problem. These criteria included using sustainable parts, ease of construction, and ease of operation.

The main parts of our generator prototype were obtained from used automobiles, cellphones, and bicycles. Our research indicated that these used devices are available in Uganda and allow our design to be constructed and maintained in Uganda. Our prototype design consisted of three main components, the generator, the circuit system, and the stand. The circuit system contained two circuits; the first circuit used the energy our generator produced to charge a car battery and the second circuit charged the cellphone battery using the stored electricity in the car battery.

Prototype testing revealed that the amount of electricity we generated was insufficient to charge the cellphone batteries. From the results of our voltage test, we concluded that the voltage that our prototype produced was too low to charge the car battery. Because we could not charge the car battery, we were unable to charge the cellphone batteries.

Based on our research and tests, we have devised several design improvements. These recommendations are mainly concerned with the electricity output of our generator. We propose to optimize the AC voltage produced by our generator by adding more magnets to the wheel, moving the steel core closer to the bicycle wheel, and adding more wire coils to the core. In order to prevent the high voltage losses after rectification, we also suggest using a more efficient rectifier.

While we did not meet our criteria of charging ten cellphone batteries, we did create a working generator out of parts which are sustainable materials in Uganda. We recommend that a future team continues our work and improves the design of our generator in order to successfully charge the cellphone batteries.

Meeting Summary 1/24

2011-01-26T00:47:00.000-05:00

Hi everybody,
Today's lamp meeting was just a overview of the project for our new team members and some general brainstorming. The major goals of this semester will be to build a new lamp head, build a new generator prototype, and create a more specific business plan. We need to have the next prototype ready to send with the Nicaragua team for their trip in June.

Action Items:
Liz: Post a summary of the engin 100 generator project on the blog
Melissa: Learn about the physics of generators
Pat: Think of reasons why the current generator prototype isn't very efficient
Elliot: Draw up two designs for the lamp head

The Lamp Team Blog:
Here's the url for the lamp team blog. If you have any interesting ideas or see any interesting articles please post on it. You should also post the results of whatever action items you're working on between meetings. The url for the blog is http://mheal-lamp.blogspot.com/.

Survey Team Lamp Results:
The results from the survey team's surveys are attached to the email I sent out today. If you haven't read them over yet I suggest doing so.

Next Week:
The next lamp team meeting will be on Tuesday directly after the M-HEAL general body meeting (so around 8pm), once again in the project room. We will look at the waveforms of the current generator and discuss improvements to the design. We will also discuss new head designs.

2010-11-09T20:54:00.000-05:00

Hey guys, sorry about the long time since the last update. There's alot of important updates in this so make sure to read all of it carefully.

I. No meeting this week
II. Dev Day
III. Emerging Markets Club collaboration
IV. NCIIA Grant

I. Dev Day:
As all of you know, this Sunday in Dev Day. Ram will be sending out the schedule in the next two days. Please let me know if you'll be coming so I can get a headcount. We need to decide what we're going to do during the group work time. Originally I had hoped that we could work on the optics setup but it doesn't look like we'll be getting those parts in time. Some of the time will be spent going over the NCIIA grant, modifying it for this semester's submission. We'll also spend some time talking with the Nicaragua team about about adding a light to the pelvic exam table. We can talk about the light fixture, but I don't know how much of that we can do without having the lighting parts on hand. Please send out ideas of other areas that need work.

II. No meeting this week:
Since M-HEAL is monopolizing your Sunday, I'm canceling Thursday's meeting.

III. Emerging Markets Club collaboration:
Today I met with two people from the B-School's EMC. They are going to be assigning two MBA students to our team from now until the end of February. Tentatively we'll be meeting with them sometime next week.

IV. NCIIA Grant:
The next deadline for the NCIIA E-Teams grant is Dec. 3rd. We stand a pretty good chance to get it this year if we can beef up our business plan. Hopefully the EMC students will be able to help us with that, although the members I talked to today thought that could be coming up too soon. I'm planning to set up meetings with Moses Lee and Kathleen Sienko, let me know if you're interested in attending.

Steve

Lamp Update: 10/14

2010-10-14T23:26:00.001-04:00

Here's this week's lamp update:

I. Tonight's Meeting
II. Next Week's Meeting
III. Engin 100 Team
IV. Business Team
V. M-HEAL Dev Day - 10/30

-----------------------------------------------

I. Tonight's Meeting:
Tonight we had a very productive meeting. We started off discussing requirements for generator the Engin 100 team is designing/building for us. Then we moved the prototype from the LBME storage area to the Wilson Center. Jack finished up the base and put some adjustable feet on it. Mike worked on the vertical to horizontal joint. Elliot made a stopper that prevents the wheel from turning and I attached a new counterweight bar (the old one was pretty wobbly). The lamp is looking great and is much sturdier than it was last meeting.

II. Next Week's Meeting:
Next week we'll be meeting on Thursday at 8 at the Wilson Center. The primary focus will be on fixing the locking mechanism. Depending on when the lighting parts come in, we may begin working on the electrical system. Otherwise we'll just be generally diagnosing and fixing problems with the current prototype (primarily looking for stability issues).

III. Engin 100 Team:
Patrick and Ram (the M-HEAL VP) will be meeting with the Engin 100 team tomorrow afternoon to discuss the basics of the project with them. Patrick, please send an email to the list to tell us how it goes.

IV. Business Team:
M-HEAL is partnering with the B-school's Emerging Markets Club (EMC) and two MBA students will be joining our team. Hopefully I'll be meeting with them next Wednesday to get an idea of how this will work. I'll keep you posted.

V. M-HEAL Dev Day:
M-HEAL Development Day has been moved to October 30th due to a Solid Works workshop on the 23rd. We'll be starting around 10am with a pancake breakfast and finishing with dinner around 7 (so you have plenty of time to get home/to the bar for the 8pm game).

As always let me know if you have any questions, comments, or ideas. Also, if you come across anything interesting please post it on the blog.

Steve

Lamp Update 10/7

2010-10-07T22:33:00.000-04:00

Hey everybody, here's this week's lamp update.

I. Tonight's Meeting

II. Assorted News

III. Blog

IV. Action Items

V. Next Week's Meeting

VI. M-HEAL Dev Day - 10/23

VII. M-HEAL Mass Meeting 10/12

-----------------------------------------------

I. Tonight's Meeting:

Tonight Mike Harrison and I went to the Wilson Center and worked on a new horizontal to vertical joint. The joint on the current prototype is a bit wobbly because we had to cut up the steering column to to attach it to the vertical pole. The new joint has a couple inches of the bike's crossbars left on it so we can use those to attach it to the vertical pole without interfering with the steering column.

II. Assorted News:

An Engin 100 team will be developing a human-powered generator for us to be completed by the end of the semester. I'll be meeting with them in the next week or so to discuss the project. Let me know if you want to mentor them or assist in mentoring them. Tomorrow I'll be going to a meeting about integrating business students into M-HEAL projects. The meeting is at 5pm in 2185 LBME. If you are interested in the business side of the lamp design you are welcome to come. Last week I emailed John Barrie at ATC about getting LEDs from him but still haven't heard back. I'll let you know when something develops on that end. The next round of NCIIA grant applications is due in early December so soon we'll need to start working on our submission.

III. Blog:

The lamp team has a blog that all of you are welcome to post on. Please post any work you do between meetings so everyone can be updated to any developments. Likewise if you are running into any problems post them on the blog so that other people can help you out. The url for the blog is http://mheal-lamp.blogspot.com/.

IV. Action Items:

New team members: Read our previous NCIIA grant application (attached) and get Wilson Center training

Mike W: Talk to John Barrie about the LEDs. Evidently he doesn't respond to my emails. Move the lamp prototype to the student group office.

Old team members: Read section 4.3 in Abigail's thesis and post your thoughts on the blog.

V. Next Week's Meeting:

Next week we'll be meeting in LBME at 8pm as usual. After some brief updates we'll break up into two groups. One group will go to the Wilson Center and put the new joint on the prototype. They will also figure out how to prevent the wheel from turning and will assess the performance of the current locking mechanism. The second group will develop a list of specs for the Engin 100 team and discuss the interface between the lamp and the generator.

VI. M-HEAL Development Day:

This semester's Dev Day will be October 23. Dev Day is an all day M-HEAL event where the design teams work on their projects and periodically break up to brainstorm with people from other teams on how each project could be improved. During last semester's Dev Day we made a ton of progress and (at least I) had a ton of fun (and free food). That Saturday is a bye week, so you don't have to worry about missing the football game. Stay tuned for more details.

VII. M-HEAL Mass Meeting 10/12:

The next M-HEAL mass meeting is next Tuesday. Frank Anderson, MD will be talking about infant and maternal health issues in Ghana; it should be a fascinating meeting.

As usual, let me know if you have any questions or comments.

See you at the M-HEAL mass meeting!

Steve

Entrepreneurship Blog

2010-03-27T16:15:00.002-04:00

This is only mildly relevant, but I've started reading this entrepreneurship blog by the guys who wrote Rework (a book on startups currently on the NYT bestseller list).

http://37signals.com/svn

Power Regulation Design

2010-02-17T17:03:00.003-05:00

Since the generator will be giving a variable AC voltage depending on crank frequency, we will need a full wave rectifier and smoothing filter. Here is an example bridge configuration to work off of:

After the prototype generator has been characterized, we can identifty the needed shunt diode (or some other type of simple voltage regulator) to drop down to the needed 12V supply.

All components must be power rated to prevent damage.

Lamp Head Design

2010-02-14T11:03:00.000-05:00

Here's the result of tonight's brainstorming session:

Any comments?

- Elliot

Gamma Design

2010-01-30T16:54:00.000-05:00

Here's a picture of our imagined design for Lamp Gamma. The base design is not solidified and still needs some work, mostly on how is the base going to support the lamp proper (angle?). Think of any questions you might have for the next meeting.

2010-01-25T19:43:00.000-05:00

Hey guys, here's this week's lamp update:

1. Today's meeting
2. What we know about the electrical system and what we don't know
3. This week's assignments
4. Next week's meeting
5. M-HEAL Design Weekend (Feb. 6th and 7th)
----------------------------------
1. Today's Meeting:
Today we did a rough paper design of the gamma prototype. We decided to go with a mechanism similar to the first joint on the beta prototype, except using a bike wheel instead of the shower drain (and now the peg goes into the wheel radially from the rim instead of through the edge). We also decided to go with a simple cross design for the base, forgoing the golf push cart design brought up last week (due to its complexity and non-mission-critical advantages). Mike will be posting drawings of what we discussed, so don't worry if you can't picture it from my (poor) description. We also discussed what we need to figure out to get the specs for the electrical system. What we discussed is in the next section.

2. What we know about the electrical system and what we don't know
Here are questions that need answering:
What surgeries do we want this to be used for and how long do they take?
Are we targeting places that only need a lamp during blackouts or places that don't have lamps?
How do handcrank charging systems work (specifically)?
How long would it take to charge up the battery with a handcrank? How long hooked up to a bike?
How can one prevent equipment damage from power surges from the grid?
Do we need to charge from the wall?
Should we incorporate solar cells?
What is our target price?
What is our target brightness?
(Let me know if there are any questions brought up today that I forgot to list)

What we do know (relevant to the questions above):
Something similar to our alpha prototype was built in Fort Portal, Uganda for ~$40
FDA spec for a minor surgical lamp is 850 lumens for a 6" spot at 36"
Our current lamp is 810 lumens and has about a 6" spot at 36"
Our current lamp uses 26 W at 3.5 V
We decided that ideally the lamp would work just off the handcrank (assuming we can get reasonable crank times)

3. This week's assignments
Mike H: Post drawings of current gamma prototype design, give me Kelly's email address (assuming she wants on the email list)
Mike W: Talk to AAPD and East Quad Bike Coop (http://www.eqbc.org/) about getting bikes (talk to Carl to figure out best method to procure bikes)
Carl: Look for bikes on Craigslist (talk with Mike W to figure out best method to procure bikes)
Patrick: Learn how handcrank generators work, talk to girlfriend about preventing power surges
Elliot: Look through Abigail's website (http://empowerdesign.org/) and thesis (http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/63801) for info on handcranks
Selvan: Get back to me about the penta-chart, do a quick write up on the tiers of Uganda's healthcare system and anything else you've looked into this past week
Naroo: Get back to me about the penta-chart
Phil, Mustafa: Get info on what surgeries are done and how long they take
Anita, Brian, Geeti: Let me know if you still want to be involved in the project
Steve: Talk to ATC about using their LEDs

Post what you have on the blog by Friday. If you're having a hard time with what you're supposed to do email me by Thursday and post something on the blog, so we can figure out how to collectively help you get it done.

4. Next week's meeting
Next week plan on meeting at 8pm on Sunday in the LBME project room once again. The meeting will be focused on big picture stuff so we can develop some good specs to design the electrical portion of the lamp.

5. M-HEAL Design Weekend
Feb. 6th and 7th is M-HEAL Design Weekend. We'll be working on the lamp from ~11am Saturday until ~6pm on Sunday (don't worry, you get to go home to sleep). Try to clear your schedule so you can be there.

As always, let me know if you have any concerns, questions, problems, or ideas.

Keep up the good work!
Steve

A Little Info about Ugandan Healthcare

2010-01-24T23:12:00.000-05:00

With Selvan's connections in Kumi, Uganda is an easy starting point in developing specs for the lamp. Here's some links that Selvan dug up from WHO:

http://www.afro.who.int/index.html

http://www.who.int/countries/uga/en/

http://www.afro.who.int/uganda/index.html

Interesting tidbits:

4% of all deaths in Uganda are women right around the time they give birth

42% of births are done by skilled personnel

30 million people live in Uganda

There are 19,000 nurses and midwives (1 per 1,600 people)

There are 2,200 physicians (1 per 14,000 people)

Pics of Prototype "Beta"

2010-01-20T01:41:00.000-05:00

Well done everyone.

1/10 Meeting Update

2010-01-11T00:44:00.000-05:00

Sorry about the long post, but make sure to read all of it (and not just skim through). We had a nice and productive meeting today, the beta prototype is pretty much done. We had to stabilize the peg and mess with the wire tension, but it is pretty solid. The only things we need to do next week are to cut down the counterweight arm, attach the counterweight, and figure out a way to easily adjust the wire tension.

Here's some random things to consider for the future that we discussed today:
- we can shorten the vertical pole by ~6", this will make the lamp less ungainly and will mean it will take fewer bike frame pieces welded together to make
- it would be nice if we could program some of the stuff for the CNC machine so we get nicely done holes (after we have a good design figured out)
- we need a stiffer base, the current one bounces a little
- we need to redesign the "helicopter" joint, the current one is too unstable and sensitive
- we need to redesign the head to make it lighter/easier to assemble (possible use of zip ties instead of pipe fitters)
- we need to know what bikes in our target countries look like (are they single/multi speed, do they have breaks, do they have pedals and chains, etc)
- making it out of primarily bike parts is going to be hard

M-HEAL Development Weekend:
For those of you who I haven't told yet, M-HEAL is planning to have a weekend where all the project teams spend the majority of the weekend working on their projects. We'll probably start Saturday late morning and end Sunday evening. With those thirty-odd hours we should be able to get a ton of work done. Right now we're tentatively thinking of having it either the last weekend of January or the first weekend of February. What weekend do people prefer? I'll probably send out another email about this tomorrow after the officers' meeting.

Lamp Meeting Time:
Please fill out when you are free for a lamp meeting here http://whenisgood.net/a4yzs8

Wilson Center Training:
We're going to need alot of training before Dev Weekend. At the very least everyone needs to take either milling or welding training and we should have one or two people who do lathe training. The Wilson Center people still don't have January training up on their website yet so to set up a training time email the relavant person on the Wilson Center training page (http://www.engin.umich.edu/teamprojects/About/training.html) and try to set up a time. Everyone should strive to get one training session in this week and one in next week. Please email the list to say what training you're planning to do so that we get a good mix of skills.

Stuff to do before the Next Meeting:
Everyone: Please read Abigail's thesis pages 64-69 and 109-110 for some background info (link: http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/63801)
Engineers: Schedule a training this week
Anita and Selvan: Look into the structure of the Ugandan healthcare system and what is normally done at each level (ie local clinics, regional hospitals, major hospitals) Abigail's thesis might be useful as a starting point
Naroo: Make a penta-chart for our pitch
Mustafa: Find out what the major procedures are in Uganda that might require a surgical lamp and how many are done
Brian: Look into electricity availability and use in Uganda, Abigail's thesis might be a useful place to start

As always, if you run into any issues or have any questions shoot me an email. If you're having trouble trying to find some information be sure to cc the lamp list; someone on the team might know someone you can talk to (or know where to find some resource). As you find out information please post it here on the blog.

Steve

Project Lead

Drill Hole Diagram

2009-11-29T19:09:00.000-05:00

Hey guys,

Here is a diagram of the drill holes we have so far in the vertical and horizontal axes. I'll update it as we continue to drill.

Phil

Estimated Battery Life

2009-11-22T18:42:00.000-05:00

- Elliot

Lamp Update 11/15

2009-11-15T23:13:00.000-05:00

Hey guys,
Here's a summary of tonight's meeting and assignments between now and next week (sorry about the length, pay special attention to the "Assignments" section, it may include things I didn't mention tonight at the meeting).

Tonight Selvan came to his first M-HEAL lamp meeting and he met the team. After introducing him to everyone the engineers left for the Wilson center. Steve, Mustafa, and Naroo brought Selvan up to speed on what we've done for the lamp and what our general goals are. They then discussed the main points that need to be made when approaching Freeplay and similar organizations (demonstrated need via Selvan's experience in Uganda, $40 proven pricepoint from Abigail, advantages of a surgical light over general lighting solutions (lower power consumption due to more focused light, frees up manpower, stability)).
Selvan told us we might be able to field test the lamp in Kumi, Uganda from which he recently returned. One of the problems for the hospital in Kumi is that the generator generates more electricity than is needed and therefore wastes fuel. Due to fuel prices the generator is underutilized and the hospital is frequently without power. The hospital has 350 beds but averages 500 patients at any given time (and up to 750 during malaria season).

Carl, Phil, Mike, and Ling went to the Wilson center and worked on the base. We now have a cage in the Wilson center to put our stuff in. Currently there is still some SF3L stuff in there that allegedly will be removed. Until it is gone please tag anything you put in there with a piece of tape with "M-HEAL" written on it, so it doesn't get thrown away.

Next week the engineers will meet at the Wilson center at 7:30 and the MBAs plus Mustafa will meet at 8:15 in the LBME project room.

Assignments:
Mustafa: Work on NCIIA grant; send me a summary of things we need for the NCIIA grant
Naroo: Work on penta-chart and blurb for clearlyso.com and lightingafrica.com; find out if a MAP project is going to Uganda and contact info for that group
Selvan: Work on penta-chart and blurb for clearlyso.com and lightingafrica.com; contact people in Kumi about testing there
Anita: Talk to Mustafa to see how you can help him on the NCIIA grant

Carl: Continue working on stability calculations with the assistance of Ling ; go to the hardware store with Mike
Ling: Work on stability calculations with Carl
Mike: Write down a drill list for everything except for the up-and-down joint (including the rotation). You'll probably need some sketches and you might have to drop by the Wilson center sometime this week to check what's done (unless you remember it all); go to the hardware store with Carl
Phil: Write down a drill list for the up-and-down joint . Include a sketch to show where the holes are. You might have to drop by the Wilson center sometime this week to check what's done (unless you remember it all). The current sketch you have up looks pretty good except you forgot the "noodle" to change the direction of the cable as it enters the tube.

Elliot: Start preliminary electrical calculations. Look in the lockers in the project room for the packaging for the flashlights we're using. The packaging should tell you the voltage and power consumption. Figure out how long our lamp head should last when connected to a typical motorcycle battery and a typical car battery. Look up general info on handcrank generators and estimate the relationship between crank time and light time.

Please post the results of your assignments to the blog.

If you have any questions or run into any problems, don't hesitate to email me, I'm here to help you.

Steve

Peg Design Sketches

2009-11-08T01:06:00.000-05:00

Here is the peg design we came up with at last week's meeting. This drawing doesn't really show how the steel cable connects to the peg, or how the spring connects to the stopper and beam. There are still a few open options for these things.

Phil

2009-11-01T23:58:00.000-05:00

Tonight we had a really productive meeting. Here's a summary:

Design Changes:
Main Joint - We fleshed out the idea from last week and are now planning to remove the hinge and instead move the pin in and out directly perpendicular to the hole. We'll try to get as much of the mechanism inside the horizontal pole as possible. We'll be using primarily parts we already have. Phil will post some sketches of the design soon; please look it over and make sure that it matches your mental picture of how things work.

Base - We'll be getting new steel L-brackets to keep the vertical pole steady and we'll replace the brackets underneath the junction with a square plate. This allows the vertical pole to rest on a flat surface instead of on bolt heads. It also simplifies the connections since the square plate can be connected using the same holes as the L-brackets.

Rotation at the Main Joint - We'll follow through with the suggestion that Mike made a bit ago and use a slotted tube on top and a tube on bottom.

Arm Length - We decided to shorten the lamp arm length to 3 ft to make it less ungainly. This will allow us to shorten the counterweight arm considerably.

---------------------

I talked to the MBA students who won the Net Impact case competition. They are planning to work with us and are at least some of them are coming to next week's meeting.

---------------------

Assignments:
Carl: Eqns for the counterweight and base
Phil: Draw up the base and main joint changes from today's meeting and post it on the blog
Elliot and Mike: Buy parts before Sunday
Ling: Weigh the lamp head
Steve: Write meeting summary, get us 24 hr access to Wilson, find out where our shelves are at Wilson

---------------------

Shopping List:
Steel L-brackets, 4"x4"
Square Piece, 8"x8", 1/8"-1/4" thick (check Wilson scrap first)
Various Bolts, 3/4"-1.5"
Eyelets for keeping the noodle in place?
Ferrule

Steve

10/25/09 Lamp Meeting

2009-10-25T22:48:00.000-04:00

Today's meeting was a discussion meeting, to remind ourselves where the design team stands right now and where we're heading to.

Here's the list of topics we discussed:

1) Lamp critique/design
2) Goals
3) Net Impact postmortem
3) Freeplay
4) Timeline
6) Who we need

First off, major problems regarding the design were addressed. We started out with the base, which isn’t too stable right now. We decided to strengthen the current design by incorporating a cage-like structure (square tube) around the vertical tube at the base. For the main joint, we identified the problem to be the wobbly hinge that introduces a big range of motion before the peg stabilizes the horizontal tube. To solve this problem, we decided to alter the current design a little bit, by replacing the hinge with block with a hole that can fit the peg and spring in it. The bike cable will be attached directly to the peg through the spring so that it moves in and out of the shower drain (joint) along a straight line. With this design we will be able to make the holes in the shower drain fit more tightly with the peg. We also decided to shorten the horizontal tube and maybe the base. This will be based on Carl’s calculations. We are hoping these new design elements will eliminate any wobbliness seen in the lamp currently. Here’s Steve’s quick sketch of the revised joint along with some pictures of the joint:

Next, we talked about our general and long-term goals:
- Business creation in developing countries: to help distributing the lamp around the region more easily.
- Local partner: someone who will be in charge of the business
- Introduce motivation to build the lamp for locals
- Improve surgical lighting
- Develop a working product
- Hospital contact
- Train locals: train selected people (mechanics?) to build the lamp so that they can do it by themselves. Biannual check-ups.
- Help in redesign: stay in contact with the people and help them out with any issues they have with the design.

We also thought we should start out with one region at first and one group (~20 people) per region. We felt that meeting the trainees in person at least once was necessary to ensure quality of the lamp is up to our expectations.

Next we talked about Net Impact and Freeplay. We generally agreed working with Freeplay will benefit us and decided to contact Freeplay relatively soon to see if they were interested at all. In the meantime, we decided to concentrate on finishing up the current prototype and market analysis. We also decided that we may need a public health (for specs) and EECS person (for circuit design) to help us out with the project.

Here is our preliminary timeline for the rest of the semester:

October: Calculations
November: Market research, get specs (how bright, how long should the battery last, etc)
December: Have mechanical part of the prototype done, first contact with Freeplay, come up with preliminary circuit design to incorporate hand-cranked power source, etc.
January: CAD design of the lamp

What we've been up to for the past several months...

2009-10-04T14:03:00.001-04:00

For new people coming to this blog, I'm sorry about the lack of updates. In the weeks following the last post we had to dedicate a large portion of our time to finishing the prototype in time to be shipped to Uganda and therefore didn't have much time to write in this blog.

Towards the end of April the lamp was sent to Mountains of the Moon University in Fort Portal, Uganda with our collaborator Abigail Mechtenberg. Unfortunately our prototype wasn't in good enough shape for clinical trials (the joint connecting the vertical and horizontal beams was too weak), but the students at the university there redesigned our lamp and built it with locally available parts for only $40, including a hand crank power system. They told us that our general concept was sound (except for that faulty joint) and that the lamp produced more than enough light.

Over the summer we redesigned the lamp to simplify it and to stabilize the joint. We're nearly done with our second generation prototype where our goal is to get all the functionality we want using hardware store parts. Next we'll be building another prototype using mostly bike and car parts.

We're also making some progress on the business side as well. Net Impact is a student group run out of the business school and they are running a case competition based on M-HEAL's surgical lamp.

Now that we're back into the semester, we should be posting more often.

Email Chain about the Lamp Poles

2009-03-15T22:05:00.001-04:00

As long as the aluminum isn't too much cheaper than steel, that sounds good. For the base we currently have some square steel tubing that should work nicely. We currently have casters that we can put on the base, but they don't have locks, so they might not be worth while (plus on Thursday I was looking at them and the ball bearings are exposed so I'm worried that alot of dirt/dust/grime will get in there and gunk it up). Currently as a battery we're just going to use AAA's from the flashlights. They should easily last through the testing phase and are easy to deal with electrically. Since they're pretty light they'll probably be in the counter-weight. Since you and Chris are working on the lowest piece it would make sense for you to work on the base, if another group finishes their part first they might work on it (although it's obviously pretty tied in with your joint since you interface with the vertical pole).

Let me know if you have any more questions.

-Steve

Michael H wrote:

Aluminum's a little bit more expensive than steel I think but it should be sturdy enough and it's a lot lighter. It also doesn't rust as easily. So I think aluminum is our best bet now? That's good, I'll start looking for some cheep alum.

Also, what are we doing for the base? Is the first prototype going to have wheels? Is the battery going down there? In some of the drawings I saw the battery as the counter weight but that might be a bit too heavy. I don't know, I guess we need to know the weight of the head before we can do any torque calculations, but a bowl plus a couple led's aren't going to weigh too much. I was just wondering because the subteams need to work together at the points of connection. If no one is working on the base I suppose me and Chris could.

Anyways, just throwing things out there. Trying to get the whole picture of this lamp.

Quoting Stephen DeWitt :

I don't think it necessarily needs to be made of stainless steel. Won't a good coat of paint be enough to prevent rust and whatnot? As for what to use for it, I don't think we had a specific plan, just something lightweight, sturdy, cheap, and non-porous. We have some steel piping in the project room (I think you've seen it, but I'm not sure), but its pretty heavy. Do you have any ideas?

Michael H wrote:
Do the tubes for the lamp frame have to be made out of stainless steel to be used in an operating room? If not, what material were we thinking of using?

Thanks,
Mike

2009-03-07T19:03:00.000-05:00

This past week has been really productive, so here's a recap. Send out an email if there's anything I miss.

1. The design at present
2. Next week
3. Field testing in Uganda

1. The Design as of Now: These parts might be hard to visualize, so I included a rough paint file to show them.

Horizontal to Vertical Joint - This joint has two degrees of freedom, one that rotates the horizontal beam up and down and one that rotates around. A bicycle hand brake mounted on the lamp head locks and unlocks the vertical joint. The vertical beam is capped with a U-shaped piece spanned by an axle that goes through the middle of the horizontal beam. Connected to the axle is a dumbell spring-loaded clamp. One end of this clamp is welded to the inside of the vertical beam, the other is connected to the bike brake wire. When the bike break lever is pulled it squeezes the two clamp pieces together, which releases the clamp from the axle. For the joint that swivels the horizontal beam around we're planning to make a joint by taking two tubes, one slightly bigger than the other, inserting them partway into each other, cutting slots in the larger one and putting tabs in the smaller one. This allows the smaller and larger tubes to rotate relative to each other with the tabs keeping them together. I'm slightly worried this will have too much friction, but I could just be paranoid.

Electrical - Since we're on a tight schedule and are a bit light on electrical expertise, I think we're best off if we just wire the LED heads together in parallel and hook them up to a battery pack made from the AAAs that came with the lamp. We can wire them to a rocker switch on the lamp head so we can turn all of them on and off at once. We can toss the batteries in the counterweight on the horizontal beam.

Lamp Head - We still don't have a final solution for this yet. I suggested using a shallow tupperware bowl and cutting holes in it for the LEDs. Mike suggested using a hubcap, which we can take a look at when we go to a junkyard to look at parts.

Head Joint - We're planning to use a car's rear view mirror joint. After playing with the one in Elliot's car, it seemed stiff enough. As a backup we could use a simple friction tightened hinge or a friction tightened ball and bracket (see the soldering stand in the project room for that joint).

Base - Just 4 legs on casters. We talked about having the rotation joint here instead of at the horizontal to vertical joint, and we still may.

2. Next Week

We need to finalize our structure and then get a part list and dimensions. Who is available on Monday to do a final design review? After that we can break off into teams and start getting parts. A group of us should head to a junk yard to check about getting parts there. Did anyone go on the junk yard trips earlier in the year?

We need to get the rest of the LEDs from Home Depot. Someone with a car will need to pick those up (I don't have a car). They'll cost ~$200 and you will be reimbursed in about a week. If someone is willing to drive but can't shell out money for them, let me know and I can go with you to front the bill.
We're pretty close to the point where we can start slapping things together, lets try to start building before the end of the week.

3. Field Testing in Uganda:

The plan is to get our lamp built and tested before April 7th, when we'll send our lamp with Abigail (the applied physics grad student most of you have met). She'll be in Fort Portal, Uganda for a couple weeks and will take our lamp to some clinics and show it to people working at a local technical school. This is a great chance for us to get feedback on our design so we can work on making the next iteration much better.

Steve

LED Hack for Surgical Lamps

2009-03-03T18:27:00.000-05:00

http://www.instructables.com/id/Replacement-for-surgical-lamp-bulbs-using-LED-circ/

Some Duke BME students made a circuit for using LED's with a surgical lamp.
Might help us spark some ideas for our own circuit.

SF VC Trip

2009-03-01T18:20:00.000-05:00

Last week Pratik and I went on the San Fransisco venture capital trip through the Center for Entrepeneurship. Our goal was to improve the visibility of M-HEAL and to get feedback on our business plan for the lamp.

We talked to a person on the board of the B-School's social venture fund and someone from the social venture club. It sounds like MBA students are looking for social venture plans to use for a business plan class (I think it's somewhat similar to our senior design) and it looked like there was some interest in using the lamp or some other M-HEAL project for that.

I also heard an interesting suggestion from another MBA student. He suggested that we liscence our design to microlenders. This increases the sustainability of M-HEAL since we'd be constantly bringing in revenue (assuming the lamp takes off). An entrepeneur in a developing countries could go to a microlender looking to start a business. The microlender could then suggest our surgical lamp, assuming the entrepeneur was in a good market for it. We create value for the microlender because our proven design decreases the risk in his investment. The business student also told us that many times selling a product at a minimal cost makes it more widely used because the owners have an active investment in it.

We didn't get as much useful feedback on the lamp design as we had hoped for. Because the conference was focused around venture capital, our design didn't line up with the stated goals of the pitch competition (since we aren't fundable through VC as a student group). Pretty much we were told that we had a good project and we should pursue startup funding via grants. I believe they also said that if we ever wanted to spin off into a for profit company, there are some social VCs in the valley who might fund us.

-Steve

WHO statistics on target countries

2009-02-23T14:58:00.000-05:00

Here are statistics from the World Health Organization for our target countries. I have included the US too for comparison.

Phil

2/17 Lamp Update

2009-02-20T00:17:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone,
Here's lamp business for the week. Sorry about the length, but make sure to read the "Tasks to be Done" section, since I included something for everyone to do over the next week and a half.

1. Tuesday's Meeting
2. Tasks to be Done
3. Spring Break
4. Meetings After Spring Break

1) Tuesday's Meeting:
Mike Harrison made his first lamp meeting this week. After introductions Elliot showed us the joint he had looked at for the lamp head joint. It was based off of a joint that he saw at work (the transportation research center where they test wheelchairs). It has the same degrees of freedom as a ball and socket joint but Elliot believes it is easier to build. I have his sketches, but I haven't had a chance to scan them in yet. Look for them to be up on the blog sometime tomorrow. We spent some time discussing the merits of this joint versus a ball and socket joint. We didn't come to any solid conclusions but decided that a staying-in-place system based on friction would be find for the lamp head joint since failure would not be nearly as catastrophic as if the joint on the horizontal bar failed.

Next we looked at the LED flashlights that Carl bought. Each one has 5 white LEDs and one red LED with a peak output of 100 lumens. According to my calculations we need ~850 lumens. Conveniently, without modifying the flashlights they have a 6" spot at 36" just like we want. We went in the dark and checked to see how much light is outside of the 6" bright spot and found that alot of it goes out at wider angles. Mike suggested that we have white cones surrounding each LED array to tighten the light distribution.

Phil brought some data on the Philippines and Uganda that he got from WHO. It shows that the current situation in the two locations is quite different in terms of doctors per capita and treated water.

2) Tasks to be Done:
We're still planning to get a prototype ready for WMR's trip to Liberia during the third week of March. This means that after spring break we don't have much time to mess around. All we need is to get a rough prototype ready so the doctors can see the idea we're shooting for, even if we don't have all the functionality we want. The main things we need are:
- the lamp head joint: Elliot has already done some good work here but we need to pick a joint and buy/make it.
- the horizontal beam join: I don't believe we have much here yet. For now we can take emphasis away from the pedal and focus on just getting the structure. We can add the pedal if we are ahead of schedule.
- the LED holder: we need something to hold the LED heads in the proper orientation
- electrical integration: at the very least all the LEDs need to turn on and off from a single switch. It would be nice to have all of them hooked up to a single large battery with the option of wall power.

Everyone: Get the basic training at Wilson. We're going to be starting to build the lamp and you need to be able to go in there. Also, remember to post your progress up on the blog as you go. It will help everyone keep up to date between meetings and allow people to give you a fresh perspective on your ideas.

Elliot: You've already been working on the lamp head joint so keep at it. By the Thursday after spring break I want to have a joint in hand. Use your best judgment on what type of joint to use and let me know before you spend money on anything (just so we stay on budget).

Mike Harrison: Work with Elliot on the lamp head joint.

Phil: On Tuesday you said that you will be looking into the LED holder. Figure out the best material and structure, but don't buy anything until we have all of our LEDs, so that we can test out how everything is going to be arranged. Also, put your data on Uganda and the Philippines up on the blog.

Mike Weist: Work with Phil on the LED holder.

Chris: Work on the joint that connects the two poles. It needs up and down movement and the ability to swivel.

Seth: I can't remember when you said you were getting back next week, but take a look at the two LED flashlights we have and start figuring out how to integrate them in the electrical system.

Carl: On Tuesday you said you would get in touch with Home Depot to order more LEDs. Also, check with Seth to see if he needs a hand on the electronics.

Mustafa: Familiarize yourself with the business documents on the Ctools site. Most of them are under Resources->Social Venture Development. Most of those documents are still pretty accurate, only we're not using car parts anymore, we're using LED flashlights. In Resources->Lamp Project->Possible countries there is a good paper about the health system in the Phillipines and some stats on various countries. Also keep an eye out for the data Phil will post on the blog.

3) Spring Break:
I know alot of us will be gone next week for spring break. Who will be around?

4) After Spring Break:
After spring break we have two weeks to get our lamp built. This means we're going to have to meet more than just Tuesdays. We'll definitely have meetings with all of us on the two Tuesdays after break but people working together on various aspects of the lamp will probably have to meet several other times so we can finish in time. Thursday is a good candidate for a general build session since I know most people said they were free then at the beginning of the semester.

Best of luck on the various aspects of the lamp you're working on. Let me know if you have any questions or run into any problems. Have a great break!

Steve

Pedal sketch

2009-02-17T20:22:00.001-05:00

Hey guys,

Here is the sketch I brought to last week's meeting of the pedal mechanism.

Phil

2/10 Meeting Summary

2009-02-10T22:18:00.000-05:00

Hey guys,
Here's a summary of lamp business this week:

1. Meeting Summary
2. Assigned Tasks
3. Next Meeting

1. Meeting Summary:
First we reviewed M-HEAL's IP policy. Pretty much any ideas anyone has regarding the lamp becomes property of M-HEAL. That said, the point is to freely distribute the plans so it shouldn't be much of an issue. Next, Phil told us about his idea for a mechanical latch and pedal system to lock and unlock the rotation of the main joint. We then discussed other ideas involving a pneumatic system similar to those on office chairs. General consensus was that it was possible but no one had a specific implementation idea. Next we discussed the reflector. Seth pointed out that the distributed nature of the LED system might not need a reflector or defuser. We just need to carefully place the LEDs. I haven't ordered the LED flashlights online because I was concerned about their brightness and shipping cost almost as much as the lights themselves. We discussed buying LED flashlights locally. We discussed batteries, but Seth told us we need to wait until we have more information about the LEDs before we can talk about batteries. Then we discussed the general timeline of the project. Next week we want to have LED flashlights to play with and have a good idea of the physical structure. Over spring break Seth (along with anyone else who is interested) will get to work on integrating the flashlights together electrically. Before the end of spring break we should have all the parts we need. After spring break we can begin building the physical structure. We will work on integration and testing until the third week of March when we will send our prototype to Liberia with WMR. If Abigail firms up on her next trip to Uganda and it fits well into our timeline, we will consider sending the lamp with her. Let me know if I forgot anything.

2. Assigned Tasks:
As you make progress please post on our project blog. The url is http://mheal-lamp.blogspot.com/. You can also get to it through the main M-HEAL website by going to the activities page and scrolling down to the lamp section.

Please sign up for the one hour Wilson training session. The next sessions are Thursday at 2 and 3 and Monday at 10 and 11. You can sign up here: http://www.engin.umich.edu/teamprojects/About/training.html.

Carl: Look into LED flashlights locally.
Elliot: Work on firming up the parts needed for the joints and how we can build them.
Mike: Work on methods to lock and unlock the joints using a foot pedal.
Phil: Look into the market for the surgical lamp. Find data on target countries and rough estimates of the size of our target population and the number of clinics/hospitals that translates to. There is already some related information on the Ctools site.
Chris: Find other surgical lamps that our somewhat similar to ours. Try to define the niche where we fit best.

Elliot and Mike you two might need to work together since you are both working on things related to the joints. As always, let me know if you run into any problems.

If you couldn't attend today's meeting but still want something to work on, shoot me an email.

3. Next Meeting:
Next meeting everyone will talk about what they've found this week. If we have LED flashlights with us we'll play around with them trying to figure out how we'll attach them and test out different arraignments. I'll give the three minute San Fransico VC pitch to get feedback from the team before Pratik and I fly out there.

--Steve

LED Torch

2009-02-08T16:15:00.000-05:00

The follow links provide the different (relevant) LED Torches that I found.

32 LED Torch; Stephen is planning on buying 5 of these torches for the electrical group to "play with"; $31.50 + S&H for 5 Torches:
http://www.lightinthebox.com/LED-Torch--E4U-091---Start-From-5-units-_p3121.html

100 LED Torch; $18.79 + S&H for 1 Torch:
http://www.1topstore.com/product_info.php?products_id=1718

-- Carl

2/3 Lamp Meeting Summary

2009-02-05T00:25:00.000-05:00

Here's a summary of lamp business for this week.

1. Meeting Summary
2. Tasks
3. Updated survey
4. Project blog
5. Next week

1. Meeting Summary:
Carl brought in printouts about four different types of LED torches, although he was unable to find the exact type that are found in Uganda. We decided to purchase 5 of the 32 LED torches. The idea is to try to rewire the torches to run off of our large battery/the grid instead of the AAs that are designed for it. This simplifies the design and if we can make a universal adapter, it makes the lighting element easy to replace (if somehow the LEDs failed, however unlikely). We also discussed the reflector assembly. To avoid having a shadow in the middle of our beam we looked at placing the LEDs off to this side and then having an angled reflector that directs the light down. In order to have a uniform spot getting the shape of the reflector might be tricky. Attached is a very rough sketch in paint for how I picture it in 2D.

Carl and I looked at Meg's edits of the lamp survey and added a few more questions. Phil talked to an OR nurse found out that the surgeon is the one who adjusts the position of the lamp and does so frequently. He needs to be able to move it even when he has instruments in his hands. Phil suggested that we have a pedal that unlocks the hinges so the surgeon can use his foot. One possible problem I've thought of since yesterday's meeting is that this design forces the surgeon to be standing next to the lamp stand. If we used a system similar to the cables for bicycle breaks we could have a few pedals set up under the table.

2: Tasks:
Due to exams and some other scheduling difficulties many of you couldn't make it to yesterday's meeting. Therefore instead of just listing who is doing what for the week we'll do task assignment via email. Email me (cc'ing the mheal-lamp) if you are interested in one of these tasks. As always if you have any questions or are having a hard time finding anything useful don't hesitate to shoot me an email.

Pedal Design: Phil

Reflector Design: If you miss high school trig this might be the job for you. Based on the specs for a minor surgical lamp (6-8" spot from 36") we need to figure out a good design for a reflector. Multiple people can work on this either independently or together so that we have multiple minds hacking away at this. This is the primary non-circuit part of the design that remains.

Emerging Markets Club: The b-school has a club called the Emerging Market club that looks into starting businesses in developing countries. Their advisor is Ted London, who gave the talk at last week's general M-HEAL meeting. We need someone to be a liaison between the two groups to see if there is any way we can help each other. If they are interested we might want to send a person or two to one of their meetings to talk about the lamp and see their general approach. I can give you an email introduction if you want so that it's not just an email out of the blue for them.

Market Research: We need to find out how large of a market there is for the lamp in terms of people and in terms of hospitals and clinics. Alex posted some relevant information on the Ctools site. We're targeting clinics and hospitals in developing countries that have access to unreliable electricity and those where the primary light source is currently ambient lighting or flashlights. This might be difficult but if you're interested just send me an email and I can work with the other officers to assemble a list of places to check for info.

Competitors: At the end of the month we're bringing our lamp design to a venture capital conference. For that conference we need to have good information on the status quo. I believe there are a few links of similar designs on the Ctools site but we need to make sure we have a comprehensive list.

Survey: See next item.

3. Lamp Survey:
As mentioned previously, M-HEAL is sending out a survey with the various student organizations that go on mission trips to developing countries. The survey team has asked us to look over and update the survey. The current version is attached. If you have any suggestions let me know, I'll be sending our edits to the survey team in a couple days.

4. Project Blog:
All of you should have gotten my email from last night that our project blog is up and running. Please post all the information you've found on that site. I want to make sure that we can get all the important information from just looking at the blog so that someone doesn't have to read through 10 links just to find the power consumption of a typical LED. Links should be well labeled and with a short summary of the key information found in it (following with the example from before a link containing a table of the specs for LEDs should be labeled as such and have basic facts like typical power consumption mentioned in the summary).

5. Next Week:
At our next meeting people will talk about the information and designs they worked on this week, we'll go over the general business plan for the lamp both in the short and long terms, we'll go over the M-HEAL IP policy, and we'll figure out tasks for the following week. There is a general M-HEAL meeting next week at 6pm in 1303 EECS and we will be meeting directly after that at approximately 7:00.

-Steve

M-HEAL Lamp Blog

2009-02-04T01:57:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone, this website is where the M-HEAL surgical lamp design team will be keeping track of its progress. For members of the team please put up a post whenever you find something interesting relating to the project. After every meeting we have I'll post a summary of what we did (similar to the weekly update emails).

If you're not on the team but are interested in what we do this site should show our progress and hopefully provide a guide for how (or more likely how not) to run a similar project.

M-HEAL is a student organization at the University of Michigan dedicated to improving access to medical technologies in the developing world. One way we approach this mission is through design projects. A ultra-low cost surgical lamp with a battery backup is our first design project and is the focus of this site. For more information about M-HEAL please visit our website: www.umich.edu/~mheal

Steve

Lamp Design Lead