The father of hacker Ricardo Andere de Mello’s good friend has ALS. His symptoms have become worse recently, causing the loss of much of his motor control. To help with the situation, de Mello decided to build a device that would enable him to communicate with his family.

What he came up with was a finger-mounted accelerometer that senses movement, and feeds data to a computer using an Arduino Uno, updated for HMI use. The computer then allows the ALS patient to speak via the same ACAT software used by Steven Hawking.

The result is a system that is very affordable, and that can hopefully help a lot of people with this and other debilitating conditions. For more information, be sure to check out the project’s write-up and watch its demo videos below.