Obesity is a contributor to many different negative health outcomes. The simplest way to prevent obesity is to eat less. Unfortunately, it is inconvenient to track how much you are eating. A cheap device that passively tracks how often you snack could help the world at scale.
The hardest, riskiest part of this project is writing an algorithm that satisfies the following criteria. 1. Can run all day on a microcontroller. 2. Can learn to identify new gestures from a small quantity of data. 3. Can be sold cheaply.
I built such a device. As proof, here is a video of the device in action. The streaming numbers are acceleration, gyroscope and two intermediate features the device calculates.
I have completed the hardest, riskiest parts of this project. The only part left (besides retraining the algorithm with a wider variety of data) is “make a bracelet and sell it”—which is something I have already done. (I did it with a team of three people and a total budget of $96,000.)
I shut down the food tracking project because venture capital fundraising was pushing the project in a profit-oriented direction I didn’t like. It has more recently been drawn to my attention that Effective Altruism (or a sister organization) might be able to fund it with a grant instead. I would happily resurrect the project tomorrow if I could get proper funding.
I have written a lot about rationality but I don’t know much about the EA ecosystem. Is my project appropriate for EA? If so, how do I go about applying for funding.
[Needs Funding] I invented a cheap, scalable tool for fighting obesity
Obesity is a contributor to many different negative health outcomes. The simplest way to prevent obesity is to eat less. Unfortunately, it is inconvenient to track how much you are eating. A cheap device that passively tracks how often you snack could help the world at scale.
The hardest, riskiest part of this project is writing an algorithm that satisfies the following criteria.
1. Can run all day on a microcontroller.
2. Can learn to identify new gestures from a small quantity of data.
3. Can be sold cheaply.
I built such a device. As proof, here is a video of the device in action. The streaming numbers are acceleration, gyroscope and two intermediate features the device calculates.
I have completed the hardest, riskiest parts of this project. The only part left (besides retraining the algorithm with a wider variety of data) is “make a bracelet and sell it”—which is something I have already done. (I did it with a team of three people and a total budget of $96,000.)
I shut down the food tracking project because venture capital fundraising was pushing the project in a profit-oriented direction I didn’t like. It has more recently been drawn to my attention that Effective Altruism (or a sister organization) might be able to fund it with a grant instead. I would happily resurrect the project tomorrow if I could get proper funding.
I have written a lot about rationality but I don’t know much about the EA ecosystem. Is my project appropriate for EA? If so, how do I go about applying for funding.
The best way of contacting me is email.