A Spoon That Shakes to Counteract Hand Tremors (2014) | Hacker News Reader

A Spoon That Shakes to Counteract Hand Tremors (2014)

npr.org

92 pointsgballan14 comments

This reminds me of a product I saw linked in HN, at least once, but I think it deserves a mention since it serves some of the same audience:

https://www.steadymouse.com/

Disclosure: I have no relationship with the dev, just think it could be useful for some folks. I almost recommended it to a colleague before thinking better if it since it would infringe on them.

Also the Emma Watch [1]. Mechanically it's related to the spoon, but simpler in that it just generates white noise rather than trying to explicitly counter the tremors. The theory is that Parkinsons causes the brain-muscle feedback loop to overshoot and the white noise eases the overshoot.

[1] https://parkinsonsdisease.net/news/emma-watch-wearable-devic...

This is awesome! Thanks for linking it.

It's a pretty great use of technology! The article is about Liftware's first device (now called Liftware Steady), also see their Liftware Level!

https://www.liftware.com/steady/

https://www.liftware.com/level/

The extra attachments aren’t cheap (and feel like they should be included in the starter pack or at least the customer should be able to choose their one attachment) but I’m sure that being able to feed yourself again would make almost any price worth it for the people who suffer from the various conditions that result in a tremor.

I bought the spoon set for my aunt after meeting the founders at a senior living conference in 2014. She's used it daily since then and loves it. Sad that something so clearly useful for huge populations is not covered by Medicare at all.

I have Essential Tremors, and have since I was in... middle school maybe? The tremors aren't to the extent where I'd need a device like this but seeing as my grandfather could've benefited for years I suppose it's good to see that the tech will exist later when mine inevitably get worse, unless some other medical procedure or medicine can help.

Me too. Mine is to the point that I no longer order soup in a restaurant.

Looking into Liftware's products tomorrow.

me as well. I'm just really glad we as a society are working to solve problems like this.

This is wonderful use of technology but I wonder if it couldn't be done without electronics? Something like the Steadicam.

Doesn't steadicam work because it has a huge added hanging mass pendulum? I'm not sure that would be senior citizen friendly.

I might spend a week prototyping something.. perhaps stabilised using very small high speed brushless motors for gyro effect, with some flexible/springy elements. The motors cost $5 or so each online. The design would be open source.

I'm not familiar with the disability however, I'm not sure which axises of motion need to be stabilised.

Get in touch if you are interested, my email is in my profile.

EDIT: What about EMS pads on the major arm muscles, accelerometer/gyro chip on the pack of the palm, and pipe it into a machine learning system that figures out the correct stimulation for stability? Is that a thing?

I bought one of these for my neighbor a year back, ill say that it was a hell of a hard time finding it online when I didnt know what to search for. It seems if they did some better marketing, SEO, listings on Amazon etc they would be common place for elderly people.

These guys sold their company to Google!

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