Thales Glasgow creating the Focus Band prototype – Midpoint Update!

Back in February we shared the exciting announcement that Thales, would be bringing Sophia’s engineering idea to life in the form of a prototype.

Thales UK is a national partner for our Leaders Award competition, which asks pupils aged 3-19 the question, “If you were an engineer, what would you do?” This year, Thales UK will create 6 prototypes across 5 of its UK sites, turning 6 pupils’ ideas submitted to our Leaders Award competition into working prototypes over the 2024/2025 academic year.

You can recap on the first update, but if you recall, Sophia’s idea was a headband which makes it a little easier to focus on school work with features such as noise cancelling, a smart camera, a desk projection, plus a customisable look!

Where we left off

In our last update, The Thales Glasgow second prototeam, Team DELTER, had separated the concept into a colourful, personalised Band and Software, that includes tracking of focus, speech to text, AI work generation and course tracking for subjects like English, Maths, Sciences.

Midpoint update

The team have now progressed with a Software Update including a UI design as well as a Hardware Update which consists of a hardware plan and a circuit diagram.

Software Update – “So far, we have implemented about 83% of the main features into the application. Most of these still need a front end added they are working away in the background so the focus for the next few weeks will be letting the user see that! Hardware code has gone through basic testing and is communicating so next is interpreting that data.”

Hardware update – A first revision of the Electronics pack was made and tested, a second revision of the PCB box will be made after faults were discovered when testing.

“The PCB layout is nearly finished. A few edits must be made before sending off to the manufacturer.”

And lastly..

“The Final circuit schematic is still to be peer reviewed by an electronics engineer.”

It sounds like the team is very busy turning the Focus Band into reality! However, they still made time for Sophia and her class to organise a STEM visit for them all!

In order to give Sophia the recognition that she deserves, the team went to her primary school and presented her idea to the entire school. After the presentation, the team set up a Marble Run STEM activity with Sophia’s class. This activity taught the class how to use the design theory as well as use the environment around them to be creative!

So what’s the next step?

The team will start to work on integrating the software with the headband and testing how the product works in terms of movement tracking.

Next they hope to finalise the hardware Components. The custom board for the headband is nearly made, this is to make sure that the hardware fits and integrates well with the headband design.

And lastly the team are planning to bring Sophia and her class along for a very special site visit!