Episode 6: CODI Chris: 00:04 Greatest day in your life. I mean here's your newborn boy and great kid. When he was born they said everything was fine. Shannon: 00:17 Cody dance! Dance baby dance. Yay. Mick Ebeling: 00:22 That kid who was making his parents so happy is Cody. Shannon: 00:25 Cody say hi! Mick Ebeling: 00:26 A bubbly, bright, brilliant little bundle of energy just like every other two year old only Cody is not like every other two year old. Shannon: 00:33 Cody. You're making me mama dizzy, Uh oh. Mick Ebeling: 00:36 As he learns to walk, his parents start noticing odd little things. Shannon: 00:40 Careful, did you hit your head? Mick Ebeling: 00:42 Cody keeps tripping over things- Shannon: 00:43 Let mama rub it. Mick Ebeling: 00:43 Constantly. Shannon: 00:44 Okay, go down some more. Shannon: 00:48 You know, just playing he would trip all the time. He was always falling. Chris: 00:52 At one time, the poor kid, I mean, his knees and legs were just black and blue, but after a while, you know, it didn't, it just didn't bother him because he was kinda like getting used to it. Shannon: 01:07 Not knowing what's wrong with your child is terrifying. It was, it was awful. I mean, it was just awful. There's not really words that can say. Mick Ebeling: 01:16 Then around age 18 months, his mother notices his eyes are kind of bouncing up and down like he was watching a kangaroo or somebody on a trampoline. Shannon: 01:25 So that's kind of what started it all. We took him to the doctor because his eye was bouncing up and down. At first they said he would grow out of it. Mick Ebeling: 01:35 But Cody didn't grow out of it. Soon he lost his peripheral vision and became night blind. So every night around dusk he has to come inside. Shannon: 01:44 We plan our days around his, his vision, so we know that we have to come home or come inside at dusk time. We can't take him to a dark theater. When people invite us, we know our limit. Mick Ebeling: 01:59 By age eight the prognosis became clear and it was heartbreaking. Shannon: 02:03 It's degenerative. So most likely eventually he'll be blind and lose all of his hearing. Mick Ebeling: 02:09 All his sight, all his hearing, soon it will all be gone. This was so very painful and as I'll explain in a minute, this was also very personal. It seemed impossible that we could find anything that could help Cody. But at our company, Not Impossible Labs. Those words are like a fire alarm going off. We knew we had to find some way to help this boy to help this family. So we did what we always do, commit, and then figure it out. We promised the family we'd find a way to help Cody and we had no idea how we were gonna do it, how we were going to fulfill that promise. We just knew we couldn't let them down. Mick Ebeling: 02:57 I'm Mick Ebeling and this is Not Impossible, a podcast that shines a light on technology for the sake of humanity. Mick Ebeling: 03:07 This podcast is brought to you by Avnet, a company dedicated to helping creators of all types find whatever they need to get from idea to product, and then get their product to market anywhere in the world. Mick Ebeling: 03:21 Today we're going to look at the process that led us to one of our own creations. We call it Project C.O.D.I Mick Ebeling: 03:32 So full disclosure, cases come to us in a hundred different ways. We find impossible problems and we try to solve them, or people facing insurmountable obstacles come banging on our door. But as I said, this one was personal. Cody happens to be the child of my wife's cousin. So he's family, but he's also a kid that had a need that no one else seemed to be able to fill. And that's really all it took to get this project started. My wife Caskey made it her mission to help this adorable, lovable little boy. You cannot look at this kid and not want to do whatever you can to help him. And so soon, it became a Not Impossible mission for all of us. Shannon: 04:15 This condition is so rare, there's not anybody that can really help us. So there's not a doctor that can say, hey, you should be doing this, this, and this for this child. I mean, that's kind of frustrating for us. Mick Ebeling: 04:27 This rare condition is called Peroxisome Biogenesis Disorder. Cody's mom, Shannon explains. Shannon: 04:33 Everybody has peroxisomes and for whatever reason, he has two mutated cells within his PEX6 gene, or peroxisome, and that's what's causing his problems. Mick Ebeling: 04:49 So let's break that down. Peroxisomes are part of a cell that controls certain body functions. In Cody's case, those cell parts were misfiring. Little by little they were destroying his sight and his hearing. Peroxisomal Biogenesis Disorder or PBD, it truly is a very rare condition. With only 500 cases diagnosed worldwide. I could barely hold it together when Cody's parents told me that children with PBD seldom live past the age of 10. Shannon: 05:19 Yes. So there's no cure for this disease or this genetic disorder that he has. There's no cure. There is no way to stop it. Mick Ebeling: 05:29 How? How is that? That must be so ridiculously hard as parents to drive that balance of eat your vegetables and also living for every day and every moment. Right? Shannon: 05:45 Right. So- Chris: 05:49 It's really hard. I mean, you want him to grow up normal like a normal kid, but in the back of your mind you, it exists. Mick Ebeling: 06:02 All kinds of emotions can run high. His Dad, Chris shares a love of baseball with his son, Cody. But a father and son game of catch will always be out of reach for them. Chris: 06:11 No, I haven't made peace with it. I mean I'm in ... I played baseball, I played sports all my life and now I look at him and he's not going to be able to do that. So yeah, it rips your heart out because we'll go out there and I'll throw the ball to him and he tries to hit it, and he does hit it sometimes, but we do it over and over again, and he loves baseball. Shannon: 06:34 The serious challenges for me are just knowing that my child, his whole life is going to have more challenges than the average child. I mean when you think about it, he's not going to be able to drive. He's not going to be able to play sports. He can't go to the movies. I mean just things like that, he's just not going to be able to do. Mick Ebeling: 07:02 Hearing about my wife's cousin Shannon and her heartbreak for a child, I felt awful. I had no idea how we were going to help Cody. I didn't even have an idea of what I was looking for. Little did I know that I would find it on an airplane. Speaker 4: 07:29 The captain has turned on the seatbelt sign, please take your seats. Mick Ebeling: 07:29 On the plane I really liked this guys Lego Land 3D luggage tag. So I struck up a conversation with them and we just clicked. Turned out to be a guy named Cameron Rodriguez a UCLA PhD teaching the emerging science of neuro imaging, which is figuring out how to produce pictures of different parts of the brain. We started geeking out about science and by coincidence we realized that we both lived in Venice beach. So I invited him to come by the lab when we got back to LA, he did, and that started everything. Mick Ebeling: 08:02 So we meet on this, this kind of serendipitous plane ride back from Boca Raton or Florida or someplace like that. You started to work with us, you know, we started to be one of those things where you'd come over by the labs and, and you were really curious about things. And I don't remember, did we work on anything prior to Cody before we started to kind of dig in? Cameron : 08:27 We did. We started playing around with some stuff for Tempt, and this is an ongoing project. Finding solutions for even everyday problems for him. Mick Ebeling: 08:39 For those of you who are not regular listeners to the podcast, Tempt is a graffiti artist who is paralyzed with ALS. We invented a device to help him paint using only his eye movement. And like a lot of people who fall in love with a non impossible mission. Cameron started working on ways to make Tempts life a little easier. Cameron : 08:57 There's not really a great shelf of tools that you can go to and say, oh this solves this problem. It's everything's kind of went off [inaudible 00:09:05]. Mick Ebeling: 09:05 Right. Cameron : 09:06 So, we tinker. Mick Ebeling: 09:06 We toyed around with that kind of stuff. And so when the Cody thing happened, so when I first approached you to play with us on Project C.O.D.I, how did I introduce it to you? Cameron : 09:17 We have a kid who's losing his sight and losing his hearing, and can we do something about it? I think, I think it was mentioned that he's a extended family and you just described him as a kid who had a lot of heart, and we want to solve this problem. Mick Ebeling: 09:36 You have kids. Cameron : 09:38 I do. Mick Ebeling: 09:38 How many kids do you have? Cameron : 09:39 I have three boys. Mick Ebeling: 09:40 How old are they? Cameron : 09:41 Eight, five, no now six, and three. Mick Ebeling: 09:46 And are they rough and tumbles? Are they like, you know, what kind of kids are they? Cameron : 09:50 I would say they're definitely rough and tumble, especially since one just ended up having to get a cast yesterday. Mick Ebeling: 09:56 I think that would define rough and tumble for sure. And do you feel, so when I first told you about Cody, what was it that you responded to? Why did you want to get involved with Project C.O.D.I? Cameron : 10:07 Because we could, if there's a problem, let's solve it. Mick Ebeling: 10:13 If there's a problem, let's solve it. But again, how? The idea as it turned out came from another non impossible project that we were working on. Which I promise I will tell you about on another episode of this podcast. It's called Music, Not Impossible. And it's a way for the deaf to experience music through vibrating sensors that bring vibration to the body in new and different ways. Cameron : 10:35 At the back of Not Impossible we call it the labs, right? Daniel Belker was there and the two of us were just sitting there doing what we do, which is just spout off ideas, brainstorm. And Daniel's working on this other project that is just amazing, called Music, Not Impossible. Cameron : 10:53 Music, Not Impossible is you have deaf people who go to concerts and their best thing is they get to hold the balloon and feel the bass, and that's unacceptable. And so he's figured out a way to remap the sound spectrum of concert and whatnot to vibrations across the body. Cameron : 11:13 So the two of us looked at each other and were like well why don't we just remap the a distance something is to vibrations across the body. Cody can feel let's go that way. And so we rigged that up, right? So we have some distance sensors and some vibration, haptic motors, things that vibrate in your cell phone, and he can navigate the world. And then we have to figure out how to map distance to something that he can interpret, right? If it's five meters away or five inches away, you want him to know the difference, and that's what makes it useful. Mick Ebeling: 11:53 Okay think about that for a second. Why don't we crash into walls when we're walking? Because your eyes tell you that, okay, that wall is three feet away, two feet away, one foot away, an alarm goes off in your brain saying change course, change course. So that's what Cameron started playing around with, trying to create a device using our Music, Not Impossible technology that would somehow help Cody use vibrations to navigate his world. To sense when he's getting close to things so he doesn't bump into them and then hurt himself. Cameron : 12:27 Cody's vision right now is the equivalent of taking two straws, putting them up to your eyes and looking through them, and then you went and put some coke bottles at the end, right? You can't see outside the straws and when you see through the end it's just this blurry mess. Mick Ebeling: 12:46 So that plus the fact that Cody will soon lose all of his hearing made vibration the logical choice for the new device. Mick Ebeling: 12:55 To explain it a little bit? How it works like physically? So there's this device and he puts it on ... Cameron : 13:00 The device works by sending out, we have two sensors on it right now. The first iteration of the device, we had a like a wrist band sort of thing, like a little bit fatter than a sweat band. And then we had a little, a sensor that came out, I want to say on a, like a popsicle stick. Mick Ebeling: 13:17 Yep. Cameron : 13:17 Cause it probably came out on a popsicle stick. Mick Ebeling: 13:20 And it was on a popsicle stick. Cameron : 13:22 Yeah. All right. So it was on a popsicle stick, and there's probably some hot glue, some duct tape, and maybe a piece of bubble gum. Mick Ebeling: 13:28 Like everything that we ever start at Not Impossible, it started the exact same way. Cameron : 13:32 You have your essential tools and those are, that's in your tool case. Mick Ebeling: 13:35 Duct tape, zip ties, popsicle sticks, chewing gum. Cameron : 13:38 Yeah. Mick Ebeling: 13:38 Soldering iron. Cameron : 13:39 And chewing gum has multiple uses, but- Mick Ebeling: 13:43 All right, so you've got a wristband and you've got a popsicle stick. What's at the end of the Popsicle stick? Cameron : 13:47 At the end of the Popsicle stick we have a couple of sensors, right? So there are all sorts of these distance sensors which are, you know, you don't have to get a tape measure out to measure something. There are some that are based on infrared light, there are some that are based on ultrasound. Right? You can go by the home depot or whatever and you, you fire your little laser across the room and it tells you how far it is. So we have something like that, and we read the distance and then we map it. We take it from one domain of distance, and we map it onto another domain of how strong to vibrate the motors. Mick Ebeling: 14:20 Cameron right now is putting on the Cody wristband, which is, it looks like one of those devices that you wear, one of those wristbands that you wear when you go roller blading, or ice skating to keep you breaking your wrist. And so there's a sensor on the palm at the Velcro on the sides. The Arduino board is on the front here, the battery on the back. And now what he's doing is pulling it closer to the microphone- Cameron : 14:47 And it stops just as you touch something. Mick Ebeling: 14:50 And the closer he gets to the microphone, the more intense the vibrations get. And it cuts out right as he's about to hit it so that you know you're getting closer, closer, closer, and impact. Mick Ebeling: 15:07 Now I want to take a minute to tell you a story or actually let Cameron tell you a story. You see Cameron had an experience in his childhood that may have in some way helped him find his way to creating this device all these years later. Cameron : 15:21 When I was a kid, the Exploratory was in San Francisco, and this awesome building called the Palace of Fine Arts. And they had this thing called the tactical dome. Right? And you had to navigate this 3D sort of maze, and it was pitch black. And so you had to feel your way through it. And that's where all the kids would have their birthday parties, and there would be like 30 kids navigating this. Cameron : 15:48 And it was ... You ended up having to figure out how to remap and you could do it in a pretty quick order. Where you were going and not use your, the sense that you always go to, which is your eyes. Right? And so we had to sweep our hands and we had to feel on touching the wall right now you had to feel the wall and you had to try to find the openings. Occasionally you ran into your friend and put your hand right on their face and you're like oh that's face, sort of thing. Cameron : 16:19 And it's essentially what we're doing here, except Cody doesn't have to physically touch the wall. He's going to be able to feel the wall from two meters, five meters away, know that there's something there. And as he approaches it, if he gets closer, the vibration gets stronger and he knows he's going towards something. He holds his hand in one place, and then there's vibration and the vibration goes away then something's moved by his hand. So, just like we did in the tactile dome, we had to go and sweep our hands around and Cody's doing that with the glove. Mick Ebeling: 17:04 That's an awesome description by the way. So I've been to the Palace of Fine Arts, living in San Francisco for a bit, and have been to the Exploratorium. And what you just described was a static world where you are the movement. You are moving through the maze of life. And the reality is life isn't like that. Life is, you're moving, life is moving, everything is moving. So you have this complicated labyrinth of a dance that you have to do, and what you have created, and what Project C.O.D.I. is all about is figuring out ways to navigate that dance. So is that it's a dance and not a collision, over, and over, and over again. Cameron : 17:43 Exactly. Mick Ebeling: 17:46 So with that inspiration and a working model of the project, Cody device, we crossed our fingers and held our breath, and we invited Cody and his family to the Not Impossible Labs to see if this thing would work. We'll tell you how that turned out after the break. Mick Ebeling: 18:06 You, yes, you are invited to the 2019 Not Impossible Awards. Join us on June 1st in downtown Los Angeles to celebrate the inspiring work of people and companies who share in Not Impossibles mission of creating innovative technology to improve the wellbeing of others. For tickets and information go to notimpossible.com/awards. Mick Ebeling: 18:32 This is a podcast dedicated to technology for the sake of humanity, but it's also about the people behind that technology. If that's you, Avnet can help, no matter what you build. Why? Because they are the first company ever to offer true end to end solutions for product development in house. That way creators in any corner of the world can take an idea from prototype all the way through mass production. Mick Ebeling: 18:57 Are you a startup and established OEM? Do you need help designing your product or organizing your workflow, or getting stuff to market? Av net's got your back. Your world is one that's always changing. And that's why Avnet is here to help you reach further. And we want to give a special shout out to Av net's engineering communities Huckster and Element 14, who help creators vet and invent the technology of tomorrow. Mick Ebeling: 19:23 Want to do more than just listen to this podcast. Maybe something like taking on the next Not Impossible challenge. Go to podcastnotimpossible.com to find info for you and for anyone who wants to take their project one step further. Mick Ebeling: 19:44 So anyway, back to creating the Cody device. It's all fun and games, and popsicle sticks and bubble gum in the lab. But eventually there comes this moment of truth Cody and his family headed down to Venice where the Not Impossible Labs are located. And Cameron and I get ready to introduce Cody to the technology we've named after him. The Computerized Obstacle Detection Interface or Project Cody, C.O.D.I. Mick Ebeling: 20:10 Cody, this is Cameron. Shannon: 20:12 Say hi to Cameron. Cameron : 20:14 Hey bud, can I have a high five? Boom. Nice. Mick Ebeling: 20:18 Cody was immediately interested in the new toy we brought for him. So without further ado, we got down to playing with it. Cameron : 20:24 You want to see it? Check it out. So you can feel back here they're the motors. Right? And they're going to like that. And then we got some over here. So you're going to feel vibration here, here, and then these are going to go like this. You're gonna feel some vibration there. Right? And you're going to put this on. Mick Ebeling: 20:42 This is cool. Do you think you can see through your hand? Cody: 20:46 No. Mick Ebeling: 20:46 Guess what? Does that sound like it's impossible? Cody: 20:50 No. Mick Ebeling: 20:50 Seeing through your hand, is that impossible? Probably. But Cameron made something that you're going to be able to put your hand up. Remember, close your eyes, remember? And as you get close to something, it's going to buzz. And that's going to be like seeing with your eyes. You're going to be able to see with your hand. Do you like airplanes? Cody: 21:09 Yeah. Mick Ebeling: 21:10 Yeah, they're big. Hey Cody, when you're, when you're walking around, what's hard for you to do? You're good at games. What's something that's hard for you to do? Cody: 21:22 Walk with the dog. Mick Ebeling: 21:28 Walk with the dog is hard to do? Yeah. Why is that hard to do? Cody: 21:34 Because sometimes they take off. Mick Ebeling: 21:35 They take off? Is it hard to catch him? Cody: 21:39 Yeah. Mick Ebeling: 21:41 How many dogs do you have? Cody: 21:42 Three. Mick Ebeling: 21:42 Do you know how cats can see at night? Cats can see at night. You're going to be like a cat with that. Cody: 21:48 How cat's can see? Mick Ebeling: 21:49 I don't know but they just have eyes that let them see. Cody: 21:53 They have smart eyes. Mick Ebeling: 21:55 They have smart eyes, yeah. So that's like smart eyes. We're making a smart hand. So cats have smart eyes. We're making a smart hand for you. Cody: 22:04 Mm-hmm. Mick Ebeling: 22:06 And before our very eyes, Cody, I guess just something clicked in his brain because he started moving around and using the device, and it worked. Cameron : 22:15 Let's go for- Cody: 22:15 Around the bushes. Cameron : 22:15 You're going to go to the bushes. Okay, close Your eyes, here let's do the fence. Ready? Do the fence, okay close your eyes. Put your hand out. Okay Ready? Here we go. Chris: 22:25 It's working? Mick Ebeling: 22:26 Mm-hmm. Chris: 22:26 Okay. Mick Ebeling: 22:28 Yeah, he's picking everything up. Chris: 22:29 Cool. Mick Ebeling: 22:29 He's actually- Cameron : 22:29 Put your hand out this way. Hey, when it vibrates, stop. Oh there it goes, did it vibrate? Cody: 22:35 Yeah. Cameron : 22:36 Yeah. And what was that? Cody: 22:37 The gate. Cameron : 22:37 It was a fence, that's right. Stop. Stop. See? When he gets close to things it vibrates. Mick Ebeling: 22:47 It was amazing. I can't begin to tell you how much Cameron and I were enjoying just watching Cody totally, totally immerse himself in this device. Cameron : 22:57 This is the solution for Cody not running into a wall. And giving him a little bit more confidence at nighttime so he can play at dusk. It's absurd that he has to go in at dusk and not be a boy and play, or that his brother has to go up to them and say, "Cody, it's time to go in the sun's starting to go down." Right? That's not right for an eight year old boy. That's absurd that he has to go in at dusk instead of going out there and playing. Mick Ebeling: 23:25 How is it like the power of a bat, and how is it not like the power of a bat? Cameron : 23:30 So I would imagine, I'm no bat expert, but bats do the echo, or like screech- Mick Ebeling: 23:39 Echo location. Cameron : 23:39 Yeah, they do that in the direction they're going. Cody's arm can move in any direction so he can figure out which way he wants to move, which gives him the independence of deciding. Instead that the bat is looking in a forward direction. Mick Ebeling: 23:56 So essentially that we are creating a, we're creating a better bat sense. We're creating a better bat sonar for a little boy. Cameron : 24:04 I mean maybe we're making them a better Batman. Mick Ebeling: 24:07 So essentially then this is a three dimensional, omnidirectional is probably a better way to say ... This is an omnidirectional bat that we're figuring out how to duct tape onto this little boy's hand so he can run around at night. Mick Ebeling: 24:26 But the best part was watching how excited Cody was to share his excitement with his little brother Blake. Cameron : 24:31 So Blake your brother wants to show you something Blake. Yeah. Blake, come here so you can see this. Cody: 24:37 Blake watch this. Cameron : 24:39 Here Blake watch this, watch he's going to show you something. If he stands up and he's walking and he sees something, he can now see with his hand. Chris: 24:47 Do you have eyeballs on your hand? Cameron : 24:48 Watch this Blake, here stand up Cody. Ready? All right, let's show him our trick. Okay. Close your eyes. Close your eyes. Let's keep walking and stop when it vibrates. Cody: 24:59 Right here Blake. Cameron : 25:01 Come here Blake. Can you feel him? Did you feel Blake? Cody: 25:07 Yeah. Cameron : 25:07 He felt you, he doesn't even have to touch you. He can feel you with his, this is his cat hand. Is that cool? Cody: 25:13 Can you make Blake one of these? Cameron : 25:17 You want Blake to have one of those? Cody: 25:18 Yeah. Cameron : 25:18 We can make Blake one of those. All right, let's go. Okay, let's go this way. Cody: 25:21 Behind there. Cameron : 25:22 No, close your eyes. Close your eyes. Let's see what you see. Are Your eyes closed? Oh, there it is. Did it work? Cody: 25:29 Yeah. Cameron : 25:29 It works? Cody: 25:30 Yeah. Cameron : 25:31 Hey, you want to do Blake? Did you find him? Cody: 25:36 Yeah. Cameron : 25:36 Did you find him with your eyes closed? Cody: 25:38 Yeah. Cameron : 25:39 Yeah. Mick Ebeling: 25:39 That was the beautiful thing about it is that he was just Cody and Blake was just Blake. And it was really amazing to watch these little beacons of light just bounce around our backyard literally and figuratively. Cameron : 25:50 This warms my heart like nothing else. Right? So I have, I have three boys. You have three boys, and the brother relationship is just, you know, really, really special to me. Blake picks up on whatever Cody needs and he steps in and it's ... There's no question asked, it's just no ask. He just goes and does it. Like he sees a need, he feels the need. Mick Ebeling: 26:13 And nothing warmed Cody's parents hearts more than seeing their two little sons exploring this brave new world together. Chris: 26:19 Well, those two are the same like they're thick as these. Mick Ebeling: 26:23 Yup. Shannon: 26:24 Blake has picked up that there's things that Cody can't do. So you know, if Cody drops something, like we'll go say, "look Cody, it's right here, it's right here," and point it out. Or he'll tell Cody, "It's okay, you can't see I'll get it." Chris: 26:38 He wanted to get Blake. "Hey Blake, come here, come here, come here, you gotta check this out." Because anytime they get new toys, again, they wanna show each other and look how it works, or they want to work together on how it works. He did in the beginning, but then Blake was like, oh, well let me try it. I want to see how it works. Chris: 26:58 I think it's great. I mean, it's not just for Cody, but for people that are deaf in the future, it's going to help them out a lot. Chris: 27:08 It's real hard because in some ways I look back that it was my fault because somehow we passed it on to him. So that's hard to deal with in the beginning. I just hope and pray that he's around a lifetime. You know, that's what I'm hoping, which I think everything's good it will happen. Mick Ebeling: 27:34 It's been a few months since Cody has had his device and Cameron is tweaked it, making it more robust. Cody is getting better and better with it. Cody loves cowboys. And guess what? Just a few weeks ago, this kid, this kid who sees the world like he was looking through two straws with coke bottles at the end, he competed in a horse show. Announcer: 27:53 Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls welcome to the western portion of our Highland riders hore show. This is our last show of the year here in beautiful Harbor Heights, and we're really happy to have you here- Woman: 28:10 And big smile on your face. Cody: 28:13 Yes. Mick Ebeling: 28:14 This is Cody and a friend of his moms at the horse show. Woman: 28:17 And then when the judge talks to you, she's gonna say, what's your horse's name? And what's his name? Do you remember? What's- Cody: 28:26 Hank! Woman: 28:28 And how old is Hank? Cody: 28:29 I know, I know, 22. Woman: 28:32 22, okay. And what kind of horse is Hank do you know? What kind of horse he is? He's a quarter horse. Shannon: 28:40 I guessed that one. Woman: 28:41 Right? Remember? So what kind of horse is he? Cody: 28:44 Quarter. Woman: 28:44 Quarter horse. Yup. Yup. Cody: 28:47 You know he's gonna decide to come out a penny, but she came a quarter horse. Woman: 28:51 Okay we're gonna line up now. Ready Buddy? Announcer: 29:03 Okay here's the results of the class. So what we have at the moment give those blue ribbons please. To number 59 that's Cody Coulter. Shannon: 29:05 The great thing is he gets a blue ribbon, so he just thinks that he's ... We think he's an amazing child and this just helps show him that he is, sorry. I know I'm an emotional mess. One day this can all be taken away from him because he can lose his sight, and he can lose his hearing, and he can lose his mobility, and we just, we don't know. I mean it could never happen and it could happen in six months, it could happen in 10 years. We don't know. Every child's different with this. This a genetic disorder. Mick Ebeling: 29:46 It's a sobering thought. We really don't know where this all leads for Cody, but at Not Impossible we have a philosophy, help one help many. We didn't set out to solve any big problems in the universe. We just set out to help one kid get around his backyard, play with his brother, and maybe, maybe compete in a horse show. But maybe, just maybe by helping this one kid we found a way to do something bigger than that. Something bigger than us. Cameron : 30:21 I think you nailed it on the head. Every med school interview, it's why do you want to be a doctor? I want to help people. But that's everybody. I mean it's, there's any incremental step we can make. If we can release it out there and then somebody else can build upon it and just, it's like Legos, like you get one Lego, you can get another one and you can build something great. So you know, anything we can do to move forward and help somebody is- Mick Ebeling: 30:46 Why do you do everything that you do for Not Impossible? Like you do so much for Not Impossible, and you've got a job, and you've got kids, and you've got this crazy schedule. Yet somehow you always find time to work on incredible projects and help people. Cameron : 31:03 Okay, so Cody right now is this proof of concept, right? He can sweep his hand around the world or the room, and he can feel how far something is. That's the proof of concept. There's the dream vision. There's always we can do better. Why not give him two wrist bands, one on each and a set of ankle bands, and a belt all have sensors. Why not integrate them? Why not bring in just more information than distance? And give him an omnidirectional view of the world. Mick Ebeling: 31:34 He'd actually have better vision than you and I. Cameron : 31:36 That would be amazing, right? Mick Ebeling: 31:38 That would be amazing to have a boy who was going blind and deaf to actually have better vision, and better hearing, and better awareness of his world than someone who supposedly should be able to see and hear the world better. Cameron : 31:53 I'm going to do it. I'm sorry, I'm going to do it. One might say that it's not impossible. Shannon: 32:01 It is more precious with Cody just because we don't know what's going to happen. So we know that every day that we have him and that he can still do the majority of what other children do. We know we're lucky. We love every moment. Chris: 32:16 You got it? Cody: 32:16 Why's there a ball in here? Why? Mick Ebeling: 32:22 On this day, Cody and his parents are walking through a park in Santa Monica, California. Cody's vision might be impaired, but his curiosity and his desire to explore the world is insatiable. Chris: 32:33 Step. Step. Cody: 32:34 Why's there steps? Shannon: 32:37 Why's there steps? So we can get to the bottom. Cody: 32:46 Why's there a bottom here? Chris: 32:46 You got it? Shannon: 32:46 Want to go check out the street? Cody: 32:47 Someone that cut down that one? Chris: 32:48 No. Shannon: 32:50 Well I think it grew that way. Cody: 32:58 But where's grandpa? Where's grandpa? Mick Ebeling: 33:02 So that's where we'll leave Cody and his family for now, walking through the park on a lazy afternoon. Doing just what any family wants to do. Just being together. Maybe just for this moment, but maybe right now, this moment is enough. Mick Ebeling: 33:31 Thanks so much for listening to Not Impossible. Thanks to our sponsor Avnet, a company that provides true end to end technology solutions to help people who make,, well anything anywhere in the world reach further. And I want to invite you to go check out their communities. Huckster the world's fastest growing developer community for learning and programming and building hardware. And Element 14, the biggest designer engineer community on the planet. You can find links to their website on ours podcastnotimpossible.com. Mick Ebeling: 34:05 Maria Villa-Logos produced this episode. Our Associate Producer is Vicki Schairer, Development Director, Erin Sullivan. Our Director of Partnerships is Joe Babarsky. Tarek Fouda did the post production. Our co-producer and the driving force behind Project C.O.D.I. and Not Impossible was the one and the only Caskey Ebeling. Our executive producers are Phil Lerman and me, I'm Mick Ebeling. Until next time, remember, help one help many. If you think of things that way, then the solutions to impossible problems start to seem Not Impossible.