[Noisebridge-discuss] Hearing augmentation / Hearing Aid Hacking

[Mark Cohen]

The interesting thing about my hearing aid is that there is a TINY  
connector where the battery door opens up. When you take the battery  
out and pop in a 4 pin connector that has +, -, TX, RX, you can  
completely control the device. The audiologist I have uses a small  
puck like device that has a wire that connects to the hearing aid. I  
wear the puck around my neck and the wire powers and controls the  
device. The audiologist connects to the puck using a wireless device  
(Not wifi or bluetooth as far as I can tell) and is able to program  
the device, change the audio profile based on what I am hearing as  
well as what my hearing test showed. We can see the sound response in  
the device representing what I'm hearing on his computer. (For some  
strange reason, he wouldn't sell/give me the "puck" or a copy of the  
software to reverse engineer.) ;)

As for donating them, I think people are squeamish of wearing a device  
that sticks in your ear that was possibly worn by someone else, hence  
the difficulty in accepting donations.. (Think of mattress donations..)

That being said, if I had an opportunity to get ahold of one that I  
don't need to rely upon to hear, I would totally hack on it and see  
what you can do.. I do know of an engineer who has done this http://community.livejournal.com/hearingaidhacks

IF there are others interested in this sort of thing, I'd love to find  
a group of people to hack on these things with.

-Mark


On May 23, 2009, at 12:15 PM, Lee Sonko wrote:

> 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
>> _______________________________________________
>> Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
>> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
>> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-discuss/attachments/20090524/6f76edbe/attachment-0003.html>