Yes, it is possible and relatively simple.
I would like to develop a prototype which involves wearing a device, strapped to a person's arm, that would vibrate and/or beep within certain angle ranges.
Is this possible?
Is it fairly simple? (I have previous experience of programming and an Electronic Engineering Degree)
This sounds a bit like fitness tracker or smartwatch. They typically have accelerometer and vibration motor, most do not produce sound, some do.
There are some off the shelf models that can be repurposed/hacked or there are some that are open enough to run your own code like Bangle.js 2 or Pinetime watch or there are some developer watches based on ESP32.
If you want to build custom device from scratch then you can use Raspberry Pico / RP2040. If battery life or size of battery is important then better use Pico 2 / RP2350 which improved power consumption a lot over RP2040. If you go this way then perhaps the fastest way to develop the software is to use micropython.
Or here is random RP2350 smartwatch part https://www.waveshare.com/rp2350-touch-lcd-1.69.htm that just needs battery plugged in.
If you care for longer battery life (like e.g. elderly person wearing this device for days or weeks without charging) then there may be better options as RP2350 is still not optimized for this use case but otherwise it should be OK.
Also the question is whether you want to have some wireless connection to the device like Bluetooth LE to possibly collect data from the device. Typical smartwatches has it, that rp2350-touch-lcd-1.69 linked above does not.
Statistics: Posted by fanoush — Fri Jan 24, 2025 12:34 pm