Hello Everyone

[stu]

Good evening everyone,

I always struggle for time to push on any projects, I joined the forum sometime ago and I’ve been trying to educate myself and drawing on the forum and website for useful information.

My wife is a manual wheelchair user due to a spinal cord injury in childhood, and three years ago our two children were diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy. My daughter currently uses a Quickie Salsa M2 Mini (NHS) powered wheelchair, currently my son is strong enough not to need a powered wheelchair.

Given our situation I thought it would be good to understand the workings of the powerchair world. Before my daughter had the Salsa she used a Wizzybug from the charity Designability, it was a great fun chair which greatly improved her access to the world, and was real easy to throw in and out of the car! We bought an ex-demonstrator Permobil K300 to cover ourselves between the transition from the Wizzybug to the Salsa. We’ve also bought a used Boma 7 off-road wheelchair, which has been great for dog walks over quite rough terrain. My wife tries to keep up in a Mountain Trike but its hard work!

We’ve completed basic projects such as replacing batteries with correct charging procedures, replacing casters, tyres, resizing seating and upholstery and spray painting covers and components. The K300 came with a seat tilt and we’ve managed to buy parts from eBay and retrofit a seat lift.

Next, I would like to tackle the programming/software side of the puzzle including adding remote control if possible, to assist in moving things around the garage and loading in/out of a box trailer. The K300 has an R-net control system and the Boma 7 has a Dynamics control system. I’m hoping the forum might be able to nudge me in the right direction for these projects.

Thanks for taking the time to read my hello, and I look forward to contributing where I can.

[hobie1dog]

Welcome to the forum, sounds like you are fortunate to be able to afford all these chairs. Post up some pictures for us.

[biscuit]

Make no mistake, Hobie1dog, it's not a matter of being able to afford these chairs! In the UK, if you are able to identify and claim your needs adequately, you will be issued with an adequate chair every so often by the NHS. But it is a big if, identifying your own needs is a challenge on its own never mind claiming them, and then the NHS will invariably use its superior position to try to beat your claim down and/or assess you themselves (they call it an "entitlement" to be assessed, in my area).

There is a thread on here devoted to the NHS wheelchair budget.

[rover220]

Dx programming is easy to achieve, rnet a little more complex.