Anyone successfully moved SMARTWheel software to a new computer? Activation code issue

[Kirsten Tulchin-Francis]

Our institution has two original SMARTWheels that were purchased years ago, and our lab is hoping to use them again for a new study. The good news is that the wheels still connect to the old laptop and appear to function correctly. The bad news is that the laptop itself is ancient, and we’d really like to migrate the software to a newer machine.

Since the company has been out of business for a decade (or more), we don’t have access to their activation system anymore. When we transferred the software onto a new computer, it asked for an activation code that we can’t generate.

Has anyone had success transferring SMARTWheel software to a newer PC?

Any tips, driver versions, workflows, or “lessons learned” would be hugely appreciated. If anyone here has general SMARTWheel experience, I’d love to connect.

Kirsten Tulchin-Francis, PhD
Nationwide Children's Hospital
Honda Center for Gait Analysis and Mobility Enhancement
kirsten.tulchin-francis@nationwidechildrens.org

[Felix Chenier]

Hi Kirsten

On our side we took another approach, mostly because many SmartWheels we had were malfunctioning but we still wanted to use them. We created a whole new PCB and firmware using an ESP32 microcontroller, so that we can swap the SmartWheel PCB for the new one. This allows collecting at much higher frequencies. We are currently finishing this project, everything is (or will be) open source and open hardware. If you don't succeed in replacing your computer, or if your existing wheels die, you may be interested in trying our solution (it's not trivial though, we still have to calibrate the wheels, but we are on it!). The code and most drawings are here: https://github.com/felixchenier/NextWheel

Don't hesitate to contact me (chenier.felix@uqam.ca) if you plan to eventually make this switch, it will be a pleasure to help.

Regards,

F