I think creating a Steemit account was in the future when I heard about this social platform ages ago. But I didn't know when I was going to be creating my account until a few days ago when a friend reminded me about it...
I actually created my account because I wanted to see what Utopian.io was all about when I was looking around Steemit. The idea of Utopian sounded cool, so I decided to make an account here. I believe in open source software and I love to program a lot. It's one of those things that make you feel powerful because you have the power to change anything with some technology and a bit of will power. Programming while listening to music is one of my favorite things to do. If not then, music and art is my other passion, out of many.
My name is Stephen Chavez. I started to learn about tech when I was younger. Computers taught me so much growing up and they helped me grow as a person. It was a challenge for me, because well, as you see I am in a power-wheelchair. But more on that later.
I'm a recent computer science graduate from Metropolitan State University of Denver. I've been making great success for myself with my information security work on medical devices. I like to hack medical devices such as power-wheelchairs, heart peace makers and, of course smart "IoT" devices like fitbits. With this research, I do presentations all over the world with my wonderful friend Lani. So far, I am getting noticed internationally, which is wonderful and awesome! Here are two out of many articles out there that shows what I am doing thus far.
http://www.therooster.com/blog/stephen-chavez-dreams-mind-controlled-machines
I specialize in information security and software engineering. As such, I like to work on interesting problems that improve my life and as well as others that may not be able to fix themselves. One such interesting problem that I worked on is making my power-wheelchair semi autonomous. This little project seemed insignificant at the time, but it turned out to have far-reaching possibilities in technology. This helped me to find that I have a passion and a desire to help secure medical devices. The research opened many doors for me in multiple areas like information security, medical device hacking, and help me to earn presenting spots in globally recognized conferences. Before graduating from university, my project was turned into an open sourced framework to work with a closed and proprietary protocol R-Net that earned international recognition.
You can see the project in action here:
I've worked hard on this hacking project and received a lot of help to make it a reality! Thanks to Solid State Depot Hackerspace. They rock!
People all over the world have been emailing me about how they are grateful finding my project to expand on. Some people made a self driving chair, some are making eye tracking software for chairs, and other projects with my code. I cannot be more happy about it. I hope you, yes, you, will help me with my future projects and follow my life adventures!
Why are you in a wheelchair?
I have a condition called Schizencephaly. It is an extremely rare brain condition that at the time, not much was known about it. It can affect everything from physical motor skills, logic skills, speech skills, hearing, eyesight, muscle, and spinal cord communication. I had one of the worst cases at the time and am not supposed to be here right now. I was to be a vegetable for the remainder of my life and I would have multiple seizures a day. But to everybody's amazement, I don't suffer from the standard issues that this condition brings. I only have the poor motor skills. This is confusing to doctors because I am missing a large portion of my brain. I have abnormally high complexity of thinking.
I can hear and understand everything that's said to me. However I cannot speak and must type on my computer to respond. It is really hard for me to communicate sometimes. I can only express myself through technology like my computer, but that's been very limiting. People are very impatient. They don't wait for me to type unless they know me personally. And in my career and today's world that is unacceptable for me. I need to express my thoughts faster
In my spare time, I've successfully added external functionality to my equipment and I am constantly looking for Human-Machine-Interface hacks and improvements. I recently have been working on a OpenBCI project with some friends. We just started it, the end goal is to control my chair with my thoughts.
Anyway... I think this is a long enough post on introducing myself to you all. Don't be scared to reach out and talk to me, I'd love to hear from people. I'm also currently looking for work and contracts to support the research I do. Let me know if you have anything! :)
Twitter confirmation post.
https://twitter.com/RedragonX/status/931969995545886720
- RedragonX