OpenHAK Fresh Out Of The Box

[biomurph]

Welcome to OpenHAK!

Leif and I have been working on one version or another of this idea since 2016. 

I know. It's been a while. 

What you have in your hands is our BETA version. There will be another release this summer at DEFCON BioHacking Village of the BioHacking Village Badge version. 

Both are basically the same. Here's some info on what you're getting.

WHAT'S IN THE BOX

• OpenHAK
• This board was produced by OSH Park, that's why it's purple
• It has features on it that allow it to connect to ANY 18mm watch band
• Watch Band
• This watch band is made of silicone rubber, and you all have different colors
• If you don't like your color, use ANY other 18mm watch band!
• Battery
• This battery fits right on top of the OpenHAK inside the case
• The battery is rechargeable via the USB port (that's all the USB port is good for)
• The battery should last a couple few days on a full charge
• Two copies of 3D printed Case
• The bottom part is flat with a hole for the MAX heart sensor. You might want to glue your bottom case on (crazy? epoxy? fielder's choice)
• The top part has a cutout for the USB port and it should 'snap' on top of the OpenHAK. This can be glued too.
• Tiny 0.05" (1.27mm) male header
• This header fits into the female breakout header on the OpenHAK. If you brick your board, you can use this to make a wired connection and bring it back to life.

FIRMWARE

Your OpenHAK comes pre-programmed with our latest firmware. When you plug in the battery, OpenHAK will advertise over BLE and want to connect to your phone (see below). Once connected, the OpenHAK goes into a loop where it sleeps for 10min, and then wakes up. When awake, it attempts to take your heart rate (RED LED blinks to heart beat if there is one) and then if it is connected to the phone it will send a data packet (Time Stamp, Heart Rate, Steps, Battery level, and 1 auxiliary user defined data bytes). Right now, we are using the first user defined data byte to send temperature taken from the MAX sensor as an example of using the aux bytes. 

PHONEWARE

We have an app on our github. Works for Android (iPhone coming!). The app will connect to OpenHAK and suck up all the data. The app will display the data, and it will store the data on your phone. Location of stored data on Android is at /storage/emulated/0/OpenHAK. Location of stored data on iPhone is,,, TBD

I know some of you do want to hack on your OpenHAK. Please read through all of the read-me files that we have before you dig into the firmware. We have the boards set up to be programmed over air with Nordic tools (apps) so you should not need to make a wired connection to your OpenHAK. In the event that you want to do something crazy (highspeed UART data transfer or other) you can wire in to your OpenHAK with the 1.27mm male header row and an FTDI friend. The pinout of the header row is conveniently placed to accept a 0.1" header soldered to it which will mate well with the Simblee RESET, TX, RX, and GND pins without too much trouble. When I do this, I usually pull out the unused pins so they don't get in the way. This header/FTDI connection is also useful if you inadvertently program your OpenHAK without #including the library that makes Over The Air Device Firmware Update possible (OTA DFU).

If you do want to hack hack hack, then it's best not to glue down the top case. The top case should snap onto the board satisfactorily and grip on there pretty ok.

I hope that this post reaches you. If you don't get this post, please let me know.

Please use this google group/forum for all questions, issues, and conversations so that we create a useful resource for future OpenHAKers!

Joel