I was excited to see this development.  So far, I’d only had success controlling other devices from Android via Bluetooth.  I picked up the attached NexusOne and tried the demo, but it crashed.  I found the program and ran it again, and it crashed again.  Ok, fine, so when I got home I googled the kit.

A little background: my own project, an Internet connected beer fridge, needed to not only connect to the Internet, but control real world things.  The Arduino can do the latter, but connecting to the internet isn’t really possible with the available shields.  The Arduino doesn’t really have the muscle to deal with the internet, either.  I needed another device to handle the internet, one that could talk to Arduino.  I’d had success with Arduino and a NexusOne via Bluetooth before.  But the NexusOne is a really expensive device, especially compared to the Arduino, so I opted for a Linksys router instead this time.  $8 at a thrift store, and $30 brand new. Can’t beat that. But it’s not a polished, super reliable system (yet).

With the weight of Google behind this effort, maybe the extra $250 might be a cheap investment for high quality code and hardware. Then I read the “How the ADK board implements the Android Accessory protocol” section.  Ouch.

The really great thing about Arduino is that just about anyone can learn to program the thing.  You can write a program with less than a dozen lines that does something useful.

In my effort to attach the Linksys router, I strove to keep things as simple as possible.   The communication between the router and Arduino is really simple: the Arduino tells the router the status of pins, the router runs a script where the status of output pins can be calculated based on the input pins.  For a temperature sensor, it looks something like this: digital_pin[01]=(analog_pin[00]/1024)*500-273.  The updated pins get sent back to the Arduino.  Simple.

With the Android Open Accessory Development Kit, you’re looking at about 100 lines of code just to have the Arduino handshake with the phone to set up a connection.  If you’re using an Arduino, it’s because you don’t have time for that crap.

Luckily, my conclusion requires only one word:

Fail.

I normally dislike Facebook, but it came through in a big way: Dan Mosedale of the Mozilla Project posted the Hacking4Health event, held at the offices of startup HealthTap, Inc, on Facebook. The plan was to get about 50 people in the office and create some cool applications using public health data.

But 200 people showed up, overflowing into the building’s hallways and using every available flat surface as a desk. So many teams entered the competition, the 8 hour event continued into the night.

At the beginning, participants with an idea got to stand up on a chair and pitch their idea and form a team.  After I presented my idea, Hunter Whitney pitched his data visualization idea and we immediately designed to join forces.  While some teams went straight to coding, we spent half the day validating our story– an effort that would later pay off.  We decided to create an application that would suggest the single most effective thing a person could do to improve their health.  We called it One Good Step.

After some initial work on a PowerPoint, I took on the hopeless task of creating an application in four hours.  In the end, the strength of our story and PowerPoint carried us through the judging.  We got dinged for not having an application ready, but got 4th place regardless.  Hunter walked away with a Snuggy and I got a “Dream Pillow.”  Not as good as the iPads for #1, but it was the validation from the judges that was really exciting.

Hunter was interviewed in the 1st video here.

We took our application to the Google Health 2.0 Developer Challenge a few weekends later.  After a day spent setting up XForms and a GlassFish stack, we ran into problems with transferring our spreadsheet based risk calculations into Javascript and had to do our demo using just our new and improved PowerPoint deck.  We demoed the Google Forms based mock up of the application.

Certain we had lost, some hackathon participants hijacked a Google branded “Conference Bike” and a case of beer and went on a joyride in the Google parking lot.  Our antics attracted security and we were forced to return.

One Good Step had taken 3rd place!  And we were going on to the Health 2.0 Conference’s developer challenge, with free tickets for our team members.  Not too shabby, since each ticket cost $1600!

I skipped work and pulled a late night to build a real prototype of our application using PHP and jQuery.  We had a huddle at HealthCamp 2.0 at the Kaiser Garfield Innovation Center in Oakland mid-week where I handed off the code, from where I had to “unfortunately” depart on a trip to Europe.  HealthCamp was a cool event, crowd sourcing speaking topics.  Todd Park from the VA was there, as well as plenty of Kaiser folks.  The two most forward thinking healthcare organizations, together in one place, spending a whole day mingling among some really interesting people!

My wife and I tracked One Good Step’s (now First Steps) progress from Europe on my Android phone, single-mindedly tracking down open wifi hotspots in Amsterdam, Vienna, and Istanbul.  We received a pleasant surprise one evening at dinner– First Steps had won the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge!

I was really torn that I couldn’t be there, but I’m happy to have been a part of the team.  Hunter wrote an article based on his experience: “Beyond the Medical Chart: Information visualization for improving personal and public health.”

The experience has refocused my career goals.  The time is ripe for merging of healthcare and technology.  Accelere’s vision of providing web 2.0 visualization and search tools for private healthcare data was a great idea, but too early. I don’t know quite what happens next, but I’m hopeful I can get back into this exciting space.

The fair organizers put an entrance right nearby us, so we got quite a bit of traffic.  The upgraded booth probably helped too, as it was more elaborate than any in sight.  And amusingly for us, we had debated how to hang our bright orange banner so we clipped it to the ends of two 10 foot sections of EMT.  This sign became a meeting place of sorts, with folks on cell phones milling about trying to meet up with friends using the sign as a landmark.

Last year, everyone wanted to know max speed and range so we created information sheets that hung off the bikes.  This year, by far the most common questions were whether the bikes have “regen” and why the tandem is powered by Makita batteries– so we’ll be updating the website and information sheets accordingly.

Many thanks to Sherry and Bridgette and the rest of the crew who put the show on.  Great time as always.  And thanks to our crew– Ben, Sheila, Victor, and Mike!

090530 Maker Faire 200949 pictures San Mateo Expo Center, San Mateo, CAMay 30, 2009