[Noisebridge-discuss] Hearing augmentation / Hearing Aid Hacking

[Lee Sonko]

When the father of a friend of mine died, I helped clean out the house. He
had several $3,000 Widex hearing aids. I tried but couldn't find any way to
resell them so I donated them to a local charity.... who, hearing their
interest level they had on the phone, probably threw them out.
 
There has got to be an opportunity for hacking here!
 
I never found a "good" place to donate the hearing aids to so there is no
central repository. There was some audiologist doctor in San Francisco that
accepted them (but I didn't take the time to drive down there to drop them
off). As always, start with the Google. The Ark of San Francisco does a lot
of donation house cleanouts (and the stuff ends up at local thrift stores)
 
Lee
 
 
 

  _____  

From: noisebridge-discuss-bounces at lists.noisebridge.net
[mailto:noisebridge-discuss-bounces at lists.noisebridge.net] On Behalf Of Mark
Cohen
Sent: Saturday, May 23, 2009 12:26 AM
To: Andrew Cantino
Cc: NoiseBridge Discuss
Subject: Re: [Noisebridge-discuss] Hearing augmentation



Not that this is the best or cheapest solution, but I require a hearing aid
and found that the Widex is tunable for specific ranges. I'm able to hear
better than most people without the aid, and tune the response for different
tasks... For example, I have a profile for TV/Movies and one for Music as
well as the standard. 

The down side is that if you don't have insurance, one hearing aid is about
$4000 + the remote ($300) *Which is insanely stupid.. It requires pairing,
doesn't use bluetooth, and requires re-pairing when you change the remote
battery. The pairing process requires going to the Audiologist with the
tools... *suck*

/Mark



On May 22, 2009, at 11:58 AM, Andrew Cantino wrote:


Hey cyborg and electronics people,

My father is high-frequency deaf.  He used to do a lot of bird watching, but
he has trouble now since he can't hear some of the songs.  I was just
looking at this product: http://www.nselec.com/songfinder.html, but it costs
$800.   It seems to me it's just a band-pass filter for selecting the
frequency range to augment, and then electronics to down-shift that range.
It's been a long time since I did electronics.  How hard would this be to
build?

This might dove-tail nicely into augmenting frequency ranges that healthy
ears can't hear as well.

Thanks everyone!

-Andrew
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