GARETH HALFACREE’S
Hobby tech
The latest tips, tricks and news in the world of computer hobbyism,
fromRaspberryPi,Arduino,andAndroidtoretrocomputing
W
e don’t usually call on computer
makers, hobbyists and tinkerers to
shore up national health services, but
in the wake of SARS-CoV-2’s spread, and the
explosion of cases of COVID-19 it has caused
around the world, these people have proven
invaluable global resources.
The rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2, formerly
known as the novel coronavirus, risked
overwhelming health service equipment. At
the time of writing, the UK National Health
Service (NHS) had reported stocks of invasive
ventilators – required for people with the
most severe reaction to the disease – being
considerably below the expected peak
requirement. Meanwhile, stocks of personal
protective equipment (PPE), including FFP2
(N95-equivalent) respirators, and even simple
face shields and gowns, have been running
dangerously low. Enter the makers.The ventilators
Ventilators, devices that breathe for patients
who can’t breathe, aren’t the sort of devices
hospitals tend to keep in vast quantities.
Typically, only a handful are required, but
the peak of COVID-19 is projected to requirethousands upon
thousands globally.
With traditional
manufacturers
unable to meet
demand, many
nations – including the
UK – have introduced
relaxed guidelines on
the production and
use of emergency-
case ventilator
systems, and makers
have stepped up to fill
the gaps.
A consortium
dubbed Makers for Life (github.com/makers-
for-life) has developed a means of using
off-the-shelf and 3D-printed parts, including
the STMicro MB1136 development board, to
produce a medical-grade ventilator for under
€500 in materials (around £437). Engineer
Marco Mascorro (github.com/Mascobot),
meanwhile, has released a design driven by
a Raspberry Pi and Arduino Uno, dubbed the
Pandemic Ventilator, which has already begun
testing in Colombia ahead of mass production.Not all designs are built from scratch. Many,
including the OxVent from Oxford University
and King’s College (oxvent.org), use off-the-
shelf manual bag valve mask (BVM) respirators
to simplify the design. The Breast Pump Vent
(facebook.com/BreastPumpVent) hacks, as
the name implies, a breast pump into service
as a ventilator.
All these, and many other designs, are
released under permissive, open hardware
licences. This means that anyone, from a makerANALYSIS
Makers for health
CUSTOMISATION / HOBBY TECH
The 3DCrowd project has
already delivered 65,000
3D-printed face shields,
but has orders for hundreds
of thousands more