Getting involved - take action
Now you are in, welcome on board ! You can start participating and contributing to the project !
Whatever your skills or background, everyone can contribute to the project. We split the project into 9 main topics to let anyone getting involved in an inclusive manner.
- Medicotechnical matters : Designing a medical device to meet medical needs
- Collaborative and community matters : Designing good methodology for the community
- Legal and licence matters : Making sure everything remains accessible
- Regulatory matters : Following regulatory expectations
- Communication matters : Spread the project and its philosophy widely
- Ethical matters : Respecting the human being and improving healthcare
- Training matters : Making sure users are well trained
- Public health matters : Improving healthcare accessibility
- Economical matters : Finding ways to sustain the project, the device and all around
These 9 topics cover up the entire project and to be addressed need various skills. You are a legal or regulatory expert, a designer, a doctor or anything else, you'll find your way into the project to get involved.
You can participate in the global effort by rendering your expertise available to the community
On slack, people discuss and ask questions. You can either participate in discussions and interact with the community by giving the community some answers on questions that will be asked.
In our workshop based in hospital Hotel Dieu in Paris, France, we host meet ups. If you have an idea and wish to come presenting it to the community, you are more than welcome… We usually setup an event in our Facebook group and send an email to the whole community letting them know.
So now, if you are inspired and willing to join see below how to get started.
Getting started
Discovering our community guides :
Understanding echOpen organization
Administrative organization
The project is carried out by a non-profit organization registered in France and open to anyone to become a member (the annual membership is 10€ and the General Assembly held once a year in spring or autumn)
The organization is governed by
Le bureau
It includes the president, vice-president, general secretary and treasurer
The coordination committee,
The echOpen coordination committee has the mission to follow up and coordinate the community efforts to make it happen !
It’s open to anyone interested in participating to the project. To join, just come every Monday at 07.00 pm (Paris time - UTC+1). During theses meetings, we review all on going project and follow up achievements. It’s also a dedicated time to :
- Decide the launch of new project
- Decide the organization of specific events, workshops, etc.
- Validate the merge of pull request
- Allocate ressources to project
- Finding solution to issues faced by project and member
For these who are to far to join, we can open a slack call (using the call function in slack).
Projects organization
We splited the echOpen global project into several sub-projects then it's easy for anyone to get involved and follow one or more projects. Each project have one or more leaders and a team dedicated to achieve its own goals.
Global planning
- CAP (workshop format)
- Bringing together experts and community members to address main challenges in tech, med, method, etc.
- Taking decisions together for further development
- Setting up the mid-term objectives and release plan
- Follow up and monitoring during weekly meetings
- Development phase (between 3 and 6 months)
- 1/3 : MAKE
- 1/6 : TEST
- 1/6 : DOC
CAP
« CAP » are one day workshops organized to address challenges faced by the community and deciding the next development. We gather experts and community members, including everyone interested in participating. It usually takes place at echOpen lab (Hotel Dieu, Paris, France) and open call can be open to anyone willing to participate.
Weekly meetings (Monday evening)
- Follow up
- Maintaining information and documentation
How to contribute
Build hard
We developed a fully documented ultrasound technology kit divided into modules. Each module correspond to a specific part of the kit such as transducer, mechanics, analog electronic, digital electronic, signal analysis and software application, etc. to let anyone with skills in such areas to get involved in an inclusive manner.
To start building echOpen hardware you may first need to understand the technology behind. Then you will discover our modular approach.
Discover the technical functions of the kit.
You can then replicate the hardware kit and improve the performance. More information in the build hard section in the website
The process
- Frok the github repository to get all the source files
- Order the components in the BOM
- Print the PCB (or request a PCB kit from echOpen)
- Setup the mother board
- Weld the components on each board
- Connect the redpitaya and load the code
- Add the mechanical part (3D printed)
- Add the transducer
- Assembly
- Test
- Give feedback
Contributing to the project to improve or challenge other's approach
You have an idea to improve the system and want to try it ? +// Explaining how to develop a module, new module, new architecture, etc., do it, test it and then send a pull request to the repository following echOpen guidance, licences, etc.
Build soft
Become a contributor in the echOpen android app. More information in the build soft section in the website
Join a sub-project
Getting involved in sub-projects
We split the echOpen global project into several sub-projects then it's easy for anyone to get involved and follow one or more sub-project.
A sub-project is defined by
- a specific name adn an ID
| ID | DEFINITION | RESP | RESSOURCES | DELIVARABLE | DEADLINE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PRJ-TOPIC-NAME | What the project aims to achieve | The person in charge and the dedicated team | Ressources allocated and needs | Outcome | Delivarable date |
project are named as follow : PRJ-TOPIC-NAME : : PRJ-topic_NameOfTheProject
- A slack channel for discussion
- A repository to store source files and content
contribute as an organization
If you represent an academic research lab, a maker/hacker space, a university or a school and you want to get your organization involved, several solutions are available :
- Advocate within researchers and students to invite them to to contribute
- Deploy echOpen instance within your organization with developing a dev kit and and all ressources to make it happens
- For any formal or informal collaboration within the project, please [contact us][[email protected]]. We received support from various organization such as schools, universities and research labs who give the community access to skills and facilities around the world. This happened in France, but also in Belgium, in Africa, South America and North America.
Help the project to achieve its goals
If you want to help the project, you can see how to do so in the Help Us section on our website.
Creating a new sub-project
If you want to create a specific sub-project within echOpen, detail your idea and send it by email. Then, we will get in touch and evaluate the ressource needed and discuss the opportunity. If the project is validated, we start the following process :
- Setting up a dedicated channel on slack and start mobilizing the community to find people interested in joining.
- The group define the project, its goals, objectives, deliverable and deadlines (milestones).
- A repository is created to receive source files and all relevant information and documents.
- Let’s start the project and make it happens
Leading a project
Animate the slack channel
Coming soon…
Organize the project
When the team is setup, a good practice is to have weekly meetings. If its too much, we advise you to organize meetings in a regular basis to keep the group up to date and mobilized toward the objectives.
Structure the information
Each project should have a notebook (like a logbook) summarizing the project, the objectives and main milestones, the steps and achievements to let anyone being easily updated in the project achievements.
Then, each project is free to structure its content the best way that’s fit for them.
Update the community
Ressources provided by echOpen to the project leader
- An email address [email protected]
- Giving access to the echOpen public calendar for the leader to setup event related to the project.
- echOpen communication ressources to spread and disseminate around.
Tools
Slack
Everything start with a discussion and people need to interact… So we setup a slack with channels corresponding to each sub-porject
Github
Is where to find the source files and all the information about the project. And it is also where to push your information, work, scheme, etc.
Gitbook
Is where to find guidelines and installation information. If you wish to participate in writing these guidelines, please contact us.
Google drive
For accessibility reason, we use google drive to create document and bring people to contribute in a easy way. When a document is no longer in use it should be publish on the corresponding GitHub repository.