Hacking Your Health: Adventures in Building a Glucose Monitor

The speaker, a high school student on a skills competition team, opens with why glucose monitoring matters. He points to the millions of people with diabetes, the high cost of continuous monitors for people without coverage, and the appeal of cheaper alternatives. He then explains the core chemistry: an enzyme taken from a common mold reacts with glucose and oxygen to produce hydrogen peroxide, and the peroxide's conductivity can be measured and mapped to a glucose level through calibration.

The middle of the talk covers the team's homemade prototype. They built a large, crude sensor from two copper electrodes with a foam membrane soaked in the enzyme, then tested it in sugar water and reported a strong correlation across only a few measurements. Design goals followed: low power draw, measurement frequency balanced against battery life, a wireless link in the ISM band with strong encryption, and a protocol such as Bluetooth Low Energy or LoRa. Energy harvesting was explored as a battery alternative. He also described laying out a circuit board in open-source KiCad, ordering boards from a low-cost manufacturer, and the soldering problems that followed.

He closes by stating the prototypes were non-functional and that the enzyme is consumed, which would require periodic replacement. The total budget was about 300 dollars. The main takeaway is how much chemistry, electronics and wireless engineering sits inside these devices. The question period touched on regulatory approval, NFC power, and non-invasive sensing.