It's been a week since the hackathon ended. What are our plans for now?

1. Build a GNU/Radio routine that'd capture the signal, apply all the filters that could be necessary and decode the data.

There's a lot to be learned with GNU/Radio and RF in general. For making a workflow such as the one we could use in an embedded device, there's a lot to be added and plenty of things to be learned.

2. Get a base station to hack into.

These seem to be available on eBay quite cheaply, evidently, from deceased patients. Once we get one, tearing it apart and dumping the firmware would be number 1 priority. That could give us plenty of insight into "Decode" and "Intercept" steps - as well as maybe become a hardware solution for interception?

3. Assemble a hardware solution for sending to volunteers - or defining a kit of software anybody could assemble.

There are a lot of patients with ICDs who expressed similar concerns about their data and how it could be used. When we have a working hardware solution capable of "Intercept" and "Decode" phases, we can cooperate with other people by collecting a lot of data from their transmissions (anonymously) to facilitate the "Decypher" phase.

4. Understand why the capture quality suffered.

Was it something we could fix with postprocessing? Was it something that'd mean the signal has to be captured again? So many questions, so little time...

5. Make collected data accessible for people who'd want to take a look at it.

Some RF-savvy people have expressed their interest in seeing the data we managed to capture - to help us fully get through "Intercept" phase. However, we could greatly benefit from the huge Hackaday community and its helpfulness.

6. Collect feedback from people in the industry.

We've already attracted the attention of some people, but it's clear this issue needs to be raised among the health professionals.

7. Get a development kit.

I wonder if the manufacturers would be cooperative on our project. However, it doesn't hurt to try and it'd help us a lot to have a transmitter-transmitter pair we could control.

Why participate in the Hackaday Prize?

First of all, it's an "assistive technology" project. We want to solve one of the problems that's stopping people from getting full information about their condition, if not the direct "give-data-to-us" way, then the hacking "we'll-take-it-ourselves" way. It makes this project a perfect fit.

Second thing is exposure. We need it, and Hackaday can provide it. We need both technical expertise of many folks for decoding and making sense of the data, and we want to raise awareness.

Third thing is prize money, which we could use to get the necessary equipment. It's very likely that we could assemble a ready-to-collect-data device for 100$, for early adopters. We also need to get the base station, but shipping costs from the USA to EU are kinda high and we're mostly students. It would be very good to get our hands on a good SDR, such as HackRF, for development - to see which problems are due to bad hardware and which are due to the lack of filtering.