Check out this medical device powered by a Game Boy Advance

A Twitter user discovered himself perplexed at the moment when he opened an older electrocardiogram measurement instrument and located the elements belonged to a Recreation Boy Advance.

The instrument is made by German firm Medical Imaging Electronics and makes use of a wave produced by the ECG to electronically management a separate recording or imaging equipment. At first look, it looks like any normal medical gadget. When opened, it’s revealed that the gadget’s display and digital elements belong to a Recreation Boy Advance, deconstructed and embedded inside. The Verge has contacted Medical Imaging Electronics for remark.

A medical system with a Recreation Boy inside might sound weird, however it’s not that unusual. Earlier than single-chip computer systems like Raspberry Pis have been popularized, the Recreation Boy was typically used as the first low cost, hackable various for controlling and programming quite a lot of issues, like sewing machines or a sonar for finding fish as much as 65 ft underwater.

Particularly, the thought of utilizing a Recreation Boy for electrocardiograms has been round for many years, as proven by this patent filed in 1997. The patent outlines the perks of integrating a Recreation Boy in electrocardiograms, together with modular performance, portability, stability of the system, quick entry to knowledge with out further cumbersome hardware, ease of use, and lowered value.

There’s not as a lot of a want to mod Recreation Boy models these days, however it's fairly cool to see that even in dated machines, hacked hardware hides in plain sight, in locations you’d by no means assume to look.

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