Unbelievable stuffy I keep reading on ventilators. Just unbelievable. If you want to kill people by the thousands, please continue. The good news is no medical professional in their right mind would use one of the hot messes so many are "inventing". Parts from Home Depot? Really?
These are life critical systems designed with serious fault tolerance in mind. Home Depot parts, randomly sourced solenoids, valves and fucking Arduino's? Has everyone gone insane?
Here, go read the Wikipedia page on ventilators:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventilator
Let me highlight a few sections. Like this one:
"Because failure may result in death, mechanical ventilation systems are classified as life-critical systems, and precautions must be taken to ensure that they are highly reliable, including their power-supply."
"Mechanical ventilators are therefore carefully designed so that no single point of failure can endanger the patient. They may have manual backup mechanisms to enable hand-driven respiration in the absence of power (such as the mechanical ventilator integrated into an anaesthetic machine). They may also have safety valves, which open to atmosphere in the absence of power to act as an anti-suffocation valve for spontaneous breathing of the patient. Some systems are also equipped with compressed-gas tanks, air compressors or backup batteries to provide ventilation in case of power failure or defective gas supplies, and methods to operate or call for help if their mechanisms or software fail."
I mean, seriously, read that again right now. If you have zero experience in fault-tolerant design of electronics, mechanics, pneumatic, hydraulic and software systems, please recognize the dangers of the Dunning-Kruger effect and stop.
If that wasn't enough, there's this:
"In Canada and the United States, respiratory therapists are responsible for tuning these settings, while biomedical technologists are responsible for the maintenance. In the United Kingdom and Europe the management of the patient's interaction with the ventilator is done by critical care nurses."
In case the point isn't obvious, what this means is that certified professionals have to operate these devices. They are not going to get anywhere close to a pile of parts from Home Depot and the local auto repair shop. They are trained to operate reasonably standardized equipment and expect form, function and reliability that comes with time-tested, certified and well proven professionally manufactured equipment.
Want to build something to help? Maybe figure out how to make hospital beds. My guess is there's far less likelihood of killing people with a frame and a matress than with a pile of Home Depot parts and an Arduino pretending to be a ventilator.
Why are these posts even permitted on HN? This is unproductive dangerous quackery. Nobody is going to invent anything useful. Go help existing companies stamp out more units of their designs. I'm sure they can use the help.
These are life critical systems designed with serious fault tolerance in mind. Home Depot parts, randomly sourced solenoids, valves and fucking Arduino's? Has everyone gone insane?
Here, go read the Wikipedia page on ventilators:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventilator
Let me highlight a few sections. Like this one:
"Because failure may result in death, mechanical ventilation systems are classified as life-critical systems, and precautions must be taken to ensure that they are highly reliable, including their power-supply."
"Mechanical ventilators are therefore carefully designed so that no single point of failure can endanger the patient. They may have manual backup mechanisms to enable hand-driven respiration in the absence of power (such as the mechanical ventilator integrated into an anaesthetic machine). They may also have safety valves, which open to atmosphere in the absence of power to act as an anti-suffocation valve for spontaneous breathing of the patient. Some systems are also equipped with compressed-gas tanks, air compressors or backup batteries to provide ventilation in case of power failure or defective gas supplies, and methods to operate or call for help if their mechanisms or software fail."
I mean, seriously, read that again right now. If you have zero experience in fault-tolerant design of electronics, mechanics, pneumatic, hydraulic and software systems, please recognize the dangers of the Dunning-Kruger effect and stop.
If that wasn't enough, there's this:
"In Canada and the United States, respiratory therapists are responsible for tuning these settings, while biomedical technologists are responsible for the maintenance. In the United Kingdom and Europe the management of the patient's interaction with the ventilator is done by critical care nurses."
In case the point isn't obvious, what this means is that certified professionals have to operate these devices. They are not going to get anywhere close to a pile of parts from Home Depot and the local auto repair shop. They are trained to operate reasonably standardized equipment and expect form, function and reliability that comes with time-tested, certified and well proven professionally manufactured equipment.
Want to build something to help? Maybe figure out how to make hospital beds. My guess is there's far less likelihood of killing people with a frame and a matress than with a pile of Home Depot parts and an Arduino pretending to be a ventilator.
Why are these posts even permitted on HN? This is unproductive dangerous quackery. Nobody is going to invent anything useful. Go help existing companies stamp out more units of their designs. I'm sure they can use the help.