Project Overview
The Carina is a Middle Ear Implant designed by Cochlear Boulder, which is used to treat moderate to severe sensorineural hearing loss. This device is fully implanted with a 50 mAh lithium-ion battery, and is charged using inductive coupling techniques.
The charger itself uses a primitive 3 LED light system with amber/green colors and steady/blinking states to convey information to the user. The first light shows the battery level of the charger itself, the second shows the connection status of the charger to the implant, and the third shows the battery level of the implant. This does not give the user detailed information about battery charge percentages, or a time estimate of how long the implant battery will last.
In an attempt to make the charging process more intuitive and informative to the user, Cochlear is exploring multiple options to create a new charging device. The first is based off of their RA 230 remote assistant that is currently used with the Nucleus cochlear implant. Additionally, Cochlear would like an unrestricted GUI with the only requirement of using a touch screen interface.
We have created multiple GUI demos as Android applications to demonstrate possible interface designs that we feel will provide a basis for the future software that will be present on the charger. We chose the Android environment in order to use a single device to test both the emulated RA 230 interface design, as well as the unrestricted touch screen GUI. Additionally, the use of mobile phones as the testing hardware will allow similar mobility to the final hardware of the charger. This means they will have roughly the same size, weight, and versatility as Cochlear`s hardware, and this was very beneficial when we performed user testing on our designs.