This project was started with my grandparents in mind. My grandparents are pretty old but they love to live an independent life and prefer not to live with any relatives. But other family members are constantly worried about their safety. There is no 911 Emergency system in the place where my grandparents live. During an emergency, typically, family and friends come to the rescue. We designed a simple panic button system which will help them alert any configured family member and/or friends about their emergency, by the push of a button. It not only sends an SMS to any mobile device and any carrier, but also sends the GPS coordinates which will help locate them easily. We successfully developed and tested our very cost effective phase-1 solution.
Going forward we would like to add more features, and a robust web based configuration system for alert notification and much much more!
Approach
With the use of the Intel IoT Edison processor paired with the Grove button, Grove GPS sensor and LED's, we’ve built a device that sends an emergency distress signal via SMS routed through a Web service. We developed our own Web service for this project using Google Cloud Services and Twilio libraries for sending SMS
Design
Using JavaScript, we developed Node JS programs for the functionality. We used Intel XDK for the IDE.
With a 5 secs interval we check the push button input. If the push button is pressed, we retrieve the GPS location from Grove GPS button.
Grove GPS provides us with a lot of raw GPS information. We parse only the lat/lon of the GPS location and send a message to Google cloud service which in turn sends the SMS message. We used the information given in this url for parsing the GPS information
Implementation Steps:
We connect the Grove push button, Grove GPS sensor, LED's to Arduino board. We deploy the program given below using Intel XDK IDE. In this implementation we are using wifi for invoking the Web Service. To send the distress message to the registered phone number, press the button and hold for 5 secs.
Results
We were able to retrieve GPS information and successfully send an SMS message to a mobile device through Google cloud services, upon pressing the push button and holding it for 5 secs.
Features:- Runs on Intel Edison
- Retrieves GPS location upon the press of the panic button and sends SMS to any number of people with the location.
- Built on Node.js which enables us to run on any device.
- This system can be used not only for elderly distress notification but also for anyone who wishes to feel safe with a panic button. Can be used as a neighborhood watch system with neighbors coming to rescue at the time of need.
Future Features:
- Online, Web based, configuration for setting and unsetting the people who will receive the SMS message.
- Add heart rate monitoring system which will detect abnormalities in heart rate and sends notification using the same system.
- Companion mobile app for alert notification
- Ability to let people add their health conditions, blood groups and other vital facts which could potentially be used by caregivers during a distress signal.
Lessons
It is quite easy to build applications for Intel Edison however our Edison board was corrupted after making a library update and we had to re-flash it. It is indeed very easy to deploy an application on Edison using Intel XDK IoT version.
Affiliations
Jayashree Ravi of Mobi Boot Camp Corp.
Where you learn, build and publish mobile apps!
Comments