itchcraft 0.4.1

Tech demo for interfacing with heat-based USB insect bite healers

Itchcraft

Itchcraft is a technology demonstration for Linux-based smartphones to interface with commercial USB bite-healers that work by locally heating up human skin.

Itchcraft is meant for studying and as a proof of concept.
It is not safe to use for treating insect bites on human skin, nor for any other medical or therapeutical purpose.

Itchcraft supports Linux and is meant to be used on Linux-based smartphones such as the Librem 5.

IMPORTANT SAFETY NOTICE – READ BEFORE USE

Here’s the tl;dr:

1. Itchcraft is not meant for treating insect bites on human skin.

2. Using a bite healer causes pain, no matter which software you use.

3. Improper use of bite healers may cause minor burns.

The long form:

Heat-based bite healers heat up your skin. That’s just how they work. Using your bite healer will cause a short burst of heat-induced pain. That burst of pain is necessary for your bite healer to work effectively.

The purpose of Itchcraft is to study and demonstrate how a Linux-based frontend that interfaces with bite healers might work. Unlike original Android and iOS apps provided by bite healer vendors, Itchcraft only serves to demonstrate a possible way how Linux-based smartphones might interface with commercial bite healers.

In other words: Itchcraft is just a tech demo meant for studying and as a proof of concept. Itchcraft is not intended, and not safe to use, for treating insect bites or for any other medical or therapeutical purpose.

While using Itchcraft with a USB bite healer connected, I recommend that you keep the bite healer away from human skin at all times.

General safety advice on using bite healers

This section contains basic safety information for bite healers in general.

Even though Itchcraft is not meant to be used to drive bite healers on human skin, this section may still be very relevant for you. For example, you might accidentally touch your bite healer while choosing to experiment with Itchcraft, so it’s important to keep the following rules in mind no matter what.

Please understand that there can always be bugs, especially in niche software like Itchcraft, whose user base is tiny. Despite all efforts, Itchcraft is essentially an untested technology demo that interfaces with a USB bite healer for research and demonstrational purposes.
I recommend that you keep that in mind, and that you consider the risk vs. benefit trade-offs involved in experimenting.

When using any bite healer, I recommend that you start with the lowest settings. That’s the Child setting, with the option for sensitive skin enabled, and the duration set to the shortest possible.

If you use a particular bite healer for the first time: stick with the lowest settings.

If you’re connecting any app (including Itchcraft) to your bite healer for the first time: stick with the lowest settings.

If you’re unsure whether the stronger settings are ok for you: stick with the lowest settings.

If the affected area of your skin is particularly sensitive: stick with the lowest settings.

If you know you’re particularly sensitive to skin irritation: stick with the lowest settings.

If your treatment is not successful: you may want to wait several minutes before you re-apply your bite healer to the same skin area. Re-apply using the lowest settings.

Your bite healer comes with important safety and usage instructions by the manufacturer. I strongly urge you to read and follow those original instructions, no matter if you use Itchcraft or the manufacturer’s original app for any purpose.

If you use Itchcraft or your bite healer improperly, you may experience minor burn.

Overview

About bite healers

Insect bite healers, also called heat sticks, heat pens, or thermal sticks, are small portable devices that allow you to treat insect bites using heat.

For more info, see the article Heat pen on Wikipedia.

USB form factor

Bite healers are typically battery-powered, but they also exist as small USB sticks that are typically powered by a smartphone. That form factor allows bite healers to be much smaller than their counterparts which have a built-in battery.

What Itchcraft can do for you

Itchcraft is a technology demo. As such, it is meant for studying, research, and just to see how Linux and USB bite healers work together.

If you own a USB bite healer and a Linux smartphone, Itchcraft may be interesting to you for those purposes.

What Itchcraft is not

• Itchcraft is not affiliated with, nor endorsed by, any manufacturer of bite healers.

• Itchcraft is not the missing Linux app for your bite healer.
  It is not an alternative to the vendor’s original app for treatment purposes, even though vendors typically only support Android or iOS and not Linux.

• Itchcraft is not meant for use to treat insect bites.
  In fact, Itchcraft is not intended for any medical or therapeutical purpose whatsoever.

• Itchcraft is not meant to be used on human skin.

Features

At the moment, Itchcraft offers the following features:

• Activate a technical demonstration of your insect bite healer using the command line

• Choose a duration: short, medium, or long

• Choose a generation: child or adult

• Choose a skin sensitivity level: regular skin or sensitive skin

• Show a list of connected bite healers

A graphical front-end is planned.

System requirements

To use Itchcraft, you need:

• a Linux-based smartphone with a working USB;

• and a USB bite healer that Itchcraft supports (see next section for details).

Supported USB bite healers

Currently, Itchcraft supports only a single bite healer model, the heat it® by the German manufacturer Kamedi GmbH. I am not affiliated with Kamedi but I’m personally very satisfied with their products.

All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

Installation

Installing from PyPI

To install Itchcraft from PyPI, open a shell and run:

pip install itchcraft

If that doesn’t work, try:

python3 -m pip install itchcraft

Installing from the AUR

Direct your favorite AUR helper to the itchcraft package.

Usage

itchcraft COMMAND

See USAGE.md or man itchcraft for details.

Contributing to Itchcraft

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Frequently asked questions

Is Itchcraft safe to use for treating insect bites?

tl;dr No, Itchcraft is not safe to use for any medical purpose.

Itchcraft is just a tech demo. I strongly discourage you from ever using it for any medical purpose. In particular, it is not safe to use for treating insect bites nor any other use on human skin.

Why is Itchcraft not safe to use for insect bite treatment?

tl;dr Approval too costly. Requirements not met. Not a project goal.

If you experiment with Itchcraft with bite healers on human skin despite the recommendations not to do so, you may get the superficial impression that Itchcraft does the same thing as the original vendor-provided apps.

Even if your observation were correct, you must understand that Itchcraft hasn’t been developed with the same level of quality assurance as the original apps. Itchcraft doesn’t have the necessary government approval for medical devices in any country of the world. This means that Itchcraft is not safe for medical or therapeutical use on human skin, despite your observations that Itchcraft may usually do the same thing as the vendor’s apps do. Lastly, treating insect bites is not a goal of the Itchcraft project.

Will Itchcraft ever be safe to use for treating insect bites?

tl;dr Most likely, it won’t.

Obtaining the necessary approval for medical devices is prohibitively costly and difficult in most legislations, especially for non-commercial products.

As a project mainly intended for studying and as a tech demo, Itchcraft doesn’t have any formal software development, quality assurance or quality control process that would be required for approval as a medical device.

In a nutshell, Itchcraft is unlikely to ever evolve into an app for treating insect bites or for any other medical or therapeutical use.

Legal notice

This document includes some general information and safety advice about bite healers. However, that information is not intended as medical advice. For medical advice, you should always consult a doctor. If you’re unsure whether you can safely use a bite healer, consult with a healthcare professional before using Itchcraft or any bite healer.

See also section 8 of the LICENSE:

Limitation of Liability. In no event and under no legal theory, whether in tort (including negligence), contract, or otherwise, unless required by applicable law (such as deliberate and grossly negligent acts) or agreed to in writing, shall any Contributor be liable to You for damages, including any direct, indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages of any character arising as a result of this License or out of the use or inability to use the Work (including but not limited to damages for loss of goodwill, work stoppage, computer failure or malfunction, or any and all other commercial damages or losses), even if such Contributor has been advised of the possibility of such damages.

Itchcraft is not affiliated with, nor endorsed by, any manufacturer of bite healers.

Particularly, Itchcraft is not affiliated with, nor endorsed by, Kamedi GmbH.

All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

License

Copyright (c) 2024 Claudia Pellegrino

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. For a copy of the License, see LICENSE.

Safety notice

1. Itchcraft is not meant for treating insect bites on human skin.

2. Using a bite healer causes pain, no matter which software you use.

3. Improper use of bite healers may cause minor burns.

Synopsis

itchcraft COMMAND

Commands

COMMAND is one of the following:

info : Shows a list of USB bite healers that are connected to the host.

start : Activates (i.e. heats up) a connected USB bite healer for : demonstration purposes.

Flags

The info command does not support any flags.

The start command supports the following flags:

-d, --duration=DURATION

The duration of the demonstration.

One of short, medium, or long.

The default is short, the safest setting.

-g, --generation=GENERATION

Whether the demonstration corresponds to treating an adult or a child.

One of the values child or adult.

The default is child, the safer setting of the two.

-s, --skin_sensitivity=SKIN_SENSITIVITY

Whether the tech demo caters to regular or particularly sensitive skin.

One of the values regular or sensitive.

The default is sensitive, the safer setting of the two.

Environment

Itchcraft supports the following environment variable:

DEBUG : If set to a non-zero value, causes Itchcraft to enable debug-level : logging. Also decreases some retry counters and prints stack traces : for errors where it normally wouldn’t.

Monitoring the bite healer’s state once activated

Monitoring the state by observing the LED color (recommended)

Your bite healer has a built-in LED, whose color tells you when the ceramic end of your bite healer is currently heating up, when it has finished heating up, and when it reverts to its default idle state.

To start the technical demonstration, follow these steps:

1. Connect the bite healer to the USB port of your smartphone.

2. Confirm that the built-in LED is pulsating (either red or green.)

3. Run the itchcraft start command from a shell.

4. Wait until the built-in LED turns purple. It will also blink rapidly. The bite healer is now heating up.
   This phase should take only a couple of seconds until the bite healer has reached its target temperature.
   If you were using the original vendor-provided app instead of this demonstration, then the heating-up phase would mean that your bite healer is not yet ready for use.
   Do not worry if you notice the CLI exiting back to the shell at this point. Your bite healer will perform the rest of the demonstration on its own.

5. As soon as the built-in LED turns blue and no longer blinks, the bite healer has reached its target temperature.
   If you were using the original vendor-provided app instead of this demonstration, this phase would mean that your bite healer is ready to use on the affected area of your skin.
   It is recommended that you do not let your bite healer come in contact with human skin while using Itchcraft.

6. If you were using the original vendor-provided app instead of Itchcraft, you’d be pressing your bite healer against the affected area of your skin as long as its LED shows a blue light.
   Do not let your bite healer touch human skin while using Itchcraft.

7. Once the LED turns back to a pulsating green, your bite healer has reverted to its idle state.
   If you were using the original vendor-provided app instead of Itchcraft, you’d be removing your bite healer from your skin at this point.
   Your bite healer is now ready for another demonstration.

Monitoring the state if you have color vision deficiencies

If you find yourself unable to discern the different colors on the LED built into your bite healer, follow these steps to achieve the same result:

1. Connect the bite healer to the USB port of your smartphone.

2. Confirm that the built-in LED is pulsating.

3. Run the itchcraft start command from a shell.

4. Wait until the built-in LED starts blinking rapidly. The bite healer is now heating up.
   This phase should take only a couple of seconds until the bite healer has reached its target temperature.
   If you were using the original vendor-provided app instead of this demonstration, then the heating-up phase would mean that your bite healer is not yet ready for use.
   Do not worry if you notice the CLI exiting back to the shell at this point. Your bite healer will perform the rest of the demonstration on its own.

5. As soon as the built-in LED stays lit and no longer blinks, the bite healer has reached its target temperature.
   If you were using the original vendor-provided app instead of this demonstration, this phase would mean that your bite healer is ready to use on the affected area of your skin.
   It is recommended that you do not let your bite healer come in contact with human skin while using Itchcraft.

6. If you were using the original vendor-provided app instead of Itchcraft, you’d be pressing your bite healer against the affected area of your skin as long as its LED shows a non-blinking, non-pulsating light.
   Do not let your bite healer touch human skin while using Itchcraft.

7. Once the LED starts pulsating and no longer stays lit, your bite healer has reverted to its idle state.
   If you were using the original vendor-provided app instead of Itchcraft, you’d be removing your bite healer from your skin at this point.
   Your bite healer is now ready for another demonstration.