alt Hacker NewsShow HN: An offline desktop companion to help maintain a healthy blink rhythm
Profession like software engineer, mechanical / graphics designer takes a lot of strain on your eyes, observing minute details for hours and hours on screen can significantly reduce the blink rate which you might not even notice until it gets irreversibly painful, leaving you with dry eyes. I am already a victim of it, working 20 years as a research engineer in computer vision, zooming into pixel level details to hand craft algorithms. Now the doctors says its only regular use of lubricating drops can keep your eyes safe.
Now with AI and available fantastic libraries it's possible to play safe so that your body does not pay the price of your profession. EyesRhythm is build to help you keep the blink rhythm healthy by giving small audio / visual indication to maintain healthy blink rhythm not just by monitoring healthy blink rate but also keeping a watch on how rhythmic they are.
EyeRhythm also has a visual log for the neck movement. It is also capable to automatically track the face using multiple webcams that you might have on your working desk to get the best view of your eyes for accurate blink detection.
Most importantly it works completely local no internet required.
Comments
I had an employer who did that inadvertently by taking screenshots of the entire desktop fleet every hour (or was it 30 mins?). Things would freeze for a second and then you would blink.
Interesting idea. I'm curious what the story is behind that Refunds page [1] when the app was just supposedly released.
Cool idea!
I will note that since I started wearing contacts, I now have to blink more often in order to prevent my contacts from drying out. This acts as a sorta natural forcing function for blinking at a more healthy rate haha
This is a great idea and can help with dry eye.
Many people who work in front of a computer have dry eye which can be literally be solved by blinking more.
Great idea
I vibe-coded such an app for windows, which blurs the screen after four seconds (adjustable) until you blink. If there is interest, I will clean it up and post it to Github.
Really cool idea, but I'm very careful with installing non-OSS stuff on my computer that records my webcam 24/7. If this was OSS, I'd probably use it.