Hi all,

I coach a First Lego League team (consisting of kids ages 9-12)  that is using the accelerometers in the wiimote to measure tremors in the human body.  More info on FLL is available at firstlegoleague.org.  Each year FLL kids are presented with a theme and they are expected to carry out a research project related to the theme.  The 2010 theme is biomedical engineering; the kids are reading the wiimote out at around 50Hz and using a simple FFT to find the peak frequencies of tremor data.  They are working with a signal processing guy on the analysis and a neurologist on the application; the have just a little actual data from a volunteer with tremors and the results of the analysis look promising.   The ultimate goal is to allow doctors to better tailor medication levels for patients with maladies like Parkinson's Disease.  The software is written in MATLAB (a path of lesser resistance for kids in middle school to do signal processing!) and released under BSD at tremorassessmen.sourceforge.net.

Any thoughts?

The kids have wmp and nck on the radar for future development.  They've read out but not analyzed the data from nck.    FLL teams have two major work areas, in addition to doing a research project (of which tremor assessment software is a part) they have to build a robot that runs on a 4x8 board.   Right now, they have a self-imposed moratorium on new development until the presentation wrapped around the project and the robot is ready for competition in a little more than a week.  

Is there a good reference for understanding wmp sensor data?

Is the accelerometer data any different for nck compared to the main wiimote?

One of the neurologists the kids are working with is interested in the project -- particularly if they could get it "fit for home use".     Roughly what's the cost for a boxed up arduino these days --- I haven't played in the mini-board arena in over a decade.    (Feel free to ignore that question; I can DAGS. )  

Thanks for the input!