LocationsCOVID-19 Open-Source Innovation: Connected Visor
The COVID-19 Detect and Protect Challenge is crowdsourcing open-source hardware innovations to tackle the disease. Every one of the 300+ innovations submitted is made freely available, with all instructions needed for others to build them. Here, we talk to Grand Prize Winners Mamane Kabirou Ousseini and Ousman Seydou Gnali, the co-founders of Startup Yayi Make, about their Connected Visor.
Tell us about your solution. How does it address a specific need around COVID-19 response/recovery?
We have developed a connected face shield that allows the user to protect his face, measure his body temperature, and help him to comply with preventive measures in the fight against COVID-19, such as social distancing and hand washing. All these features are due to the different sensors located on the visor.
There are many products on the market in the fight against the COVID 19 including protective visors, infrared thermometers, and so on. Our mission with this product is to make a tool with several features that will help and guide its users in the fight against coronavirus.
What was the inspiration behind the project?
Yayi Make is a young company that develops medical devices, such as a malaria detector (e-Bani) with which we won an innovation contest (eTakara Niger 2018, http://www.etakara.ne/dition-2018), and a hospital management platform coupled with connected objects for monitoring vital parameters of hospitalised patients. The UNDP and Hackster motivated us to develop an open-source product through their challenge, this allowed us to participate from Niger in the fight against this virus.
Co-founders of Startup Yayi Make from left to right: Mamane Kabirou Ousseini and Ousman Seydou Gnali
Why do you think open-source is so important in responding to COVID-19?
Open-source helped us to learn a lot of things in many areas, including creating our company and becoming makers. With the border closures of many countries, our country Niger needed more protection and detection equipment against COVID 19, and this could only be effective with local production. The new digital manufacturing methods with open source are the fastest and most efficient means to manufacture locally and share equipment between countries in the fight against COVID 19.
What is the impact you hope to achieve with this solution?
The mass production of our connected visors by companies around the world and their availability on the market is the best of our expectations with this project. We are currently working on an industrialised version that we will be able to put on the market and we hope that other companies will do the same with the project.
What is one solution in the #COVID19DetectProtect challenge that you wish you'd built?
We would have liked to design all the projects in the detection category, these are innovative projects that can be used for other diseases even after the coronavirus.
Mamane Kabirou Ousseini (Hardware engineer) and Ousman Seydou Gnali (Software engineer) are the co-founders of Startup Yayi Make, a young Nigerian company that uses technology to create solutions to local problems through connected objects, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and mobile applications. Discover our products on: yayimake.org.