Carpal Pal

Inspiration

As computer science students, we are all too familiar with the strain that comes with typing all day. Our hand pain was so prevalent it invoked a concern for our general nerve health; this led us to searching for measures to take in order to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS). CTS is a common condition within the nerves, making up 90% of nerve damage cases, and it can potentially be developed by anyone. (With that being said, it is mostly found within adults, and occurs 3x more within women). The rate of CTS within the general population is expected to increase alongside the increase of desk jobs. Studies have found a correlation between working office jobs for extended periods of time and developing CTS, which is concerning news for people who code all day!

What it does

Carpal Pal is a web extension that focuses on preventing the development of CTS. The chances of developing CTS are significantly decreased when a person takes breaks to exercise and stretch their hands. Knowing that, we developed a fun way to remind our users to stretch their hands! After an extended period of work, our users are notified and given the option to stretch and exercise their wrist alongside our mascot cat, Pal. If they choose to exercise, they will be redirected to the Carpal Pal webpage, where they will find videos that guide their exercises and stretches. Alongside said videos, the user's camera is opened and the movement of their hand is tracked to ensure that they are performing the proper stretches.

How we built it

To build Carpal Pal, we used JavaScript, CSS, HTML, and MediaPipe

Challenges we ran into

We had to learn many things on the spot, such as:

JavaScript
How to build a google chrome extension
How to interface with Google’s recent switch to Manifest V3 for their extension API

In addition to the learning challenges, the API we are using had no documentation for web development, so we had to find the original source code and reverse engineer

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Figuring out how to use the API to track the joints of the user to ensure that they are performing the proper hand movements
Using the difference in the position of the users hands from our stretch model to begin a timer counting down when the user moves their hands into the stretch
Managing to learn everything in such a short period of time

What we learned

Setting realistic expectations - prioritizing the most key parts of our idea to make a focused product
Working together and using each other’s strengths
Making a chrome extension with no previous knowledge on how to go about that

What's next for Carpal Pal

Hardware variant in the form of a pencil topper so that the user can track their wrist activity whilst writing as well
Tracking keyboard activity and basing the frequency of exercises off of that, since sometimes a timer is not the best indication of how much work is being done
Adding more options for Pals so that our users can select from a variety of animals which ones they would like to stretch with