[hackerspaces] Hearing aids

[Bob Baddeley]

For the ears, check out the necomimi ( 
http://www.neurosky.com/necomimi/). It has the ears, the EEG, and the 
swivel/perk mechanism already taken care of. You might be able to hack 
it to get the integration with hearing.

On 10/24/2012 10:35 AM, Lisha Sterling wrote:
> I've been thinking about this since my dad got his hearing aids. He
> put it off for more than two years after getting a test that proved
> that he really did need hearing aids and yes, they would help. The
> reason he put it off is because they were so damned expensive. The
> cheapest decent ones were $2500 per ear!! Finally, the VA ended up
> buying his hearing aids for him since there was a clear linkage
> between his military service and his hearing loss. But, then, after
> getting the things, he had to go back a couple of times for
> adjustments before they got everything perfect.
>
> I kept questioning why these things should be more expensive than a
> decent laptop. "Because they're so small." OK, so why are they more
> expensive than a high end telephone? "Because they have super
> high-tech magic in them!"
>
> OK, yes, there are some complex things going on in the software. There
> is some sort of communication between the two hearing aids, I've been
> told, though I don't know why or what exactly that inter-hearing-aid
> communication is actually doing to improve the sound experience.
>
> A lot of the basics of hearing aid software probably can and should be
> created rather quickly in an open source program. Then we just need
> the hardware. I've seen an Instructable on how to create high quality
> ear monitors (like earbuds but molded to your own ears). We could use
> that as a base to jump from to create open hardware hearing aids.
>
>
> I have another, related, idea to build an eeg-controlled headband with
> animal ears [cat ears, dog ears, mouse ears, etc] and microphones. The
> eeg interface would let you swivel the ears and maybe perk them up.
> Little microphones inside the ear canal of the ears would send sound
> to a processor in the headband that would adjust the tones up/down as
> appropriate to allow you to hear things normally outside your range
> and then to the monitors in your ears, allowing you to hear "like a
> cat/dog/mouse".
>
> Thing is, the research and work for the one would easily feed into the other.
>
> - Lisha
>

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