Tom Boonsiri has been working with OLPC Goldenstate and OLPC Health for some time now.  Lately, he’s released a new revision of his low-cost heart rate monitor hardware.  Details from their blog:

Two revisions later we have something closer to “child tamper proof”. Our prototypes are on their way out to many eager children! Hooray!

If you are interested in receiving them for your pilot please send me an email to: tom.boonsiri@gmail.com. We will soon release a few prototypes for private purchase (under a G1G1 model to help finance further prototypes for the pilots). Stay tuned for more details.

Big thanks to Mike Koop and Dan Ehlers for their efforts on the latest PCB layout. Another big thanks to the guys at Liquidware/GL Interfaces for subsidizing the cost of a component.

We also have a message to the Devel, and Health mailing lists:

Fellow developers,

Is your Measure activity feeling neglected? If so, shame on you. =)
I’d like to encourage everyone to build on the great work of Arjun Sarwal and help us extend the sensor interface with our peripheral — the heart rate monitor.

Pictures of the device:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3559/3419907541_f62b168dce_m.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3558/3420715230_00e29b7787_m.jpg

It’s a relatively simple device that measures the blood flow in your finger with an infrared sensor. Powered by USB, the device sends measurements to the XO via the AC/DC sensor interface (audio jack). Using a Measure variant with a heart beat detection method, we are able to display the heart rate (as shown in the pic).

If you’re a developer interested in integrating biofeedback into your application, please email me for more details on how you can get your hands on a few of our peripherals. Otherwise, we are looking for developers who can help us evolve the Measure activity to better suit the lesson plan we have created for the device. The device is not of clinical quality and solely for educational purposes. We are definitely interested in feedback on our direction.

In the short-term, it would be interesting to develop a gui where you could structure a family tree (even extending it to branches for relatives) and allow kids to record measurements for various family members. This could potentially evolve into other health education efforts with a wiki backbone to support health wellness.

Please send me your feedback and your interest!

Thanks,
Tom Boonsiri — OLPC GoldenState

Further details on their blog.  You can also join the OLPC Goldenstate mailing list.

Update: The Heart Rate Monitor is available for pre-order at XOexplosion.

It’s been written that the XO-1’s hidden feature is an ebook reader given its high-contrast, high-resolution screen.  Volunteer Tom Robinson has tweaked the XO’s browser so it can read O’Reilly’s Safari Books Online.

Last week I was thinking about how cool it would be if Amazon’s Kindle supported O’Reilly’s Safari Books Online service, and I decided to dust off the XO to see if it could be used as an ebook reader for Safari Books. With a little help, it can.

In ebook mode you can scroll in all four directions, page up/down, and jump to the top or bottom of a page, but you cannot click the next/previous buttons within Safari Books. However, GreaseMonkey and a simple userscript can solve that.

via tlrobinson.net

OLPC Afghanistan‘s Svetla writes:

The OLPC Afghanistan Team is pleased to announce that 396 Laptops have been distributed to Istiqlal High School in Jalalabad to cover grades 4,5 and 6!!!

A ceremony took place at the governor’s palace including the Deputy Minister, Director of ICT for the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Communication and IT Director general of ICT, parents, children (top class position holders e.g. “honor roll”), USAID/ASMED’s regional manager and the Technical Implementation Team.

The laptops are pre-installed with:

• Complete localization of all core activities in both national languages of Afghanistan (Dari and Pashto)
• The Ministry of Education standard national curriculum books
• Economic information for parents including advice on job interviews etc, a local business directory, a guide to starting a business in Afghanistan, and research of different possibilities for starting small businesses locally.
• Health information (Basic Hygiene, Nutrition, Hand washing – some remaining to be translated)
• Localized updated manuals / guides that replace the standard user manual and appear when the user clicks the Help Icon
• Information for parents about the XO laptop and it’s benefits

Children were of course delighted to receive the laptops and quickly started exploring.  The Technical Implementation Team will be following up after the Afghan New Year Holiday to see how they and their teachers are getting on.  Teachers have already received a 4 day training and had the laptops themselves for over a month to prepare.

You can follow along with the latest news from OLPC in Afghanistan at http://olpc.af

Earlier this week, we talked about the goals of OLPCorps. We also described the OLPCorps Support Committee, which is open to anyone interested in contributing to the program. The knowledge and experience of the OLPC community can play a huge role in the success of OLPCorps, as we try to build upon past successes and avoid prior and preventable mistakes.

Besides the roles described on the Support Committee wiki page, we’re looking for individuals interested in mentoring OLPCorps teams. If you have experience in deployments, pedagogy, technical work, international development, or another field related to OLPCorps, e-mail us at OLPCorps@laptop.org!

We’ll be having a conference call at 6 p.m. EDT on Sunday, March 8th to discuss how OLPC community members can support OLPCorps. As this call will focus on the Support Commitee and other ways to get involved, we won’t be discussing general OLPCorps questions. Please see our wiki page for answers to any question. If you’d like to join the call, please e-mail us at OLPCorps@laptop.org, and we’ll send you the call info. All are welcome!