PCBWay TV Show 01 - What Did Makers Do to Fight Against COVID-19？

At the beginning of 2020, a virus named COVID-19 swept China and within a few months, most countries suffered to varying degrees. During that miserable times, lots of makers created many meaningful projects with a desire to help fight back the COVID-19. This article will introduce 5 different kinds of projects made by our intelligent PCBWayers. You can also watch the video version below.


1. Coviclcok

Coviclock is a protoboard for NodeMCU + ILI9341 display born during the Covid-19 pandemic, hence the name. The firmware is available on Github and is a great example of how to build an efficient table clock and calendar showing Time, Date, Temperature, and data taken from a remote CSV. Firmware shows Coronavirus data for a chosen Italian region.

The clock is automatically set using an NTP server. A routine makes auto-adjustment for DST time. Board features also an active buzzer, actually used for giving an alarm when COVID-19 data are updated, and two tactile switches. Switches are not used in the firmware but there are routines in the source code for detecting them using interrupts.


2. 3D Printed Face Shield

Jorge’s version

When the COVID19 crisis began in Spain and with the lockdown, as a maker, Jorge and with his non-profit association Ripolab Hacklab, have organized locally with other anonymous people from their village (Ripollet, near Barcelona), to print in 3D facial shields and accessories for medical personnel. Until March 9th, they had 10 people who have already succeeded to distribute more than 430 facial shields and more than 40 straps for the surgical mask. And they continue.

Eric’s version

As the concern of the healthcare workers that faced a great challenge when combated the coronavirus for lacking adequate PPE, Eric looked into 3D printing whatever he could do to make some help. And he turned out that a facial shield is not difficult to recreate at home. So he just started with this project and share all the files, instructions, settings to the public.

You can check the links below the video if you want to build on your own.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJtRBTxELZk&t=12s


3. Lenses for social distancing

At present humanity is knocked down by a virus called COVID19, to avoid its contagion the World Health Organization among multiple precautions recommends a social distancing of at least 1 meter (3 feet) of the distance between you and other people. As an alternative to help solve this problem, Rafael develops lenses with a distance ultrasound sensor, with an indicator (LED) that gives a visual alert to get away from people.

The lens has an HC-SR04 [2] ultrasonic sensor specially designed for distance measurement, among many alternatives it was chosen for its low price and low power consumption, all controlled by the Atmega 328p microcontroller and programmed with the Arduino IDE, the idea is very economic development and easy to build since communities can adapt the majority of current lenses to the detection and alert system.

The system has an integrated battery charge sensor that can optionally include the code to emit a low battery alert.

To develop a robust code that performs 2 measurements and a comparison with the previous measurement (to avoid false alarms) before making an alert decision and thus make the decision to activate or not the light alert.


4. Automatic soap dispenser

The coronavirus can be spread not only through the air but also through contact. Thus washing your hand frequently once come back from the public place can effectively preventing the infection. So Jonathan’s automatic soap dispenser can be a great help. He made two versions of this. Something special is that he adds a screen to show the 7 steps of handwashing. 

Version 1

Version 2

5. Non-contact infrared temperature sensor

Early symptoms of coronavirus infection will have a fever, dry cough, and fatigue. Therefore, temperature measurement is one of the indicators in the initial screening of infected people. 

If our body temperature exceeds 37.5 degrees then it can be suspected as an initial step to do the testing to the next stage. Take this point, Anak made this non-contact infrared temperature sensor which consists of LCD and wireless sensor.



If you have designed a project about the COVID-19, feel free to contact us through lesley@pcbway.com. We are willing to add your project to enrich this article. Let's do more for a better future.!

Although, for your unfulfilled project, drop a message to sponsor@pcbway.com. Supporting projects is our permanent persistence!


Project Plan: Louisa

Article Writing: Lesley

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