Gadget Master

This is hilarious. You may have heard of the Bone Collector, well here is the Sigh Collector.

One inventor has built a system that measures and 'collects' sighs. It records the degrees of his sighing during the day, and then represents the amount of air expelled in a separate visual display.

It is an Arduino-based system made up of two parts. There is a large, inflatable "red air bladder" system, activated by appropriate wireless signal. There is also a few pieces of kit to be worn by the user, with a chest strap monitoring breathing and communicating with the red bladder.

It also uses a Xbee shield, to allows the Arduino board to communicate wirelessly using Zigbee.

Electronics parts include

• 1, 20cm Stretch Sensor
• 1 red RCA cable, Male and female headers
• 1 10K Potentiometer with large sized knob
• 1 3-way toggle switch
• 2 Arduino Microcontrollers (Diecimille or newer)
• 2 9V battery clips with 5mm (centre positive) male jacks.
• 2 xBee wireless modules
• 2 xBee shields from LadyAda
• 1 FTDI cable for programming the xBees
• 1 LMC662, "rail-to-rail" OpAmp chip
• Misc Electronics components

But for the full build and pictures, check out the excellent Instructable website.

Note, registration is required for access to the free PDF of build instructions.