STEP

A software package that tries to enable objective and accessible balance assessments. It does so by using a Nintendo Wii Balance board and a Raspberry Pi zero (2)W.

STEP is a development effort of 4 Master Next Level Engineering students form the University of Applied Science Utrecht.

Installing / Getting started

1. To setup your own STEP dongle, follow this guide: https://github.com/TimoWalraven/STEP/wiki/How-to-setup-your-own-dongle.
2. If you already have a preconfigured STEP dongle + balance board, follow this guide: \ (EN): https://github.com/TimoWalraven/STEP/wiki/(EN)-STEP-user-instructions \ (NL): https://github.com/TimoWalraven/STEP/wiki/(NL)-STEP-gebruikershandleiding

Features

In essence, the STEP package has 3 main features:

• Read center of pressure data from the Wii Balance Board
• Make a recording of the center of pressure data
• Analyze the recording using various algorithms

Contributing

This repository will probably not be maintained after the end of the project. However, if you want to contribute, you can do so by creating a pull request. We will review it and merge it if it is a good addition to the project. Here's a list of things on the development roadmap:

• [ ] Fix some minor bugs
• [ ] Make serial connection more robust
• [ ] Implement guidance on the use of COP variables in a clinical setting

The projects future is guided by Dr. Jaap Jansen. If you have any questions, you can contact him at: Jaap.Jansen@hu.nl

A conda environment running Python 3.9 was used during development. The environment can be recreated using the environment.yml file or the requirements.txt file. To run the STEP interface, run the backend.py file.

Research

The STEP package is the result of a research project. The research report can be found here: \ (EN): available soon

Links

Some useful links:

• Research group: https://www.hu.nl/onderzoek/innovatie-van-beweegzorg

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the following people for their contributions to the project:

• Stavros Korokithakis for his blog posts on how to use the Wii Balance Board as a scale.
• Dr. Flavien QUIJOUX for his research and for answering our questions.

Licensing

This project is licensed under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more info.