Fall Guardian

A wearable, connected device that provides a safety link between a vulnerable person and a caregiver

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Project aim

I wanted to build something with the Arduino 101 that could make a real difference to somebody's day-to-day life. Many vulnerable people have their independence restricted because they are at risk of falling over, or getting lost, when out and about. My device is designed to provide a lifeline to a carer, who will be informed automatically in case they have a problem. In addition, the carer can find out remotely whether the user is OK.

Main functions

The device will send an automatic SMS notification to the carer in the following cases:

  • User falls over
  • User presses the panic button
  • User moves more than a set distance (currently 500m) from the home location
  • User's heart rate falls outside set lower and upper limits
  • In the response to a query text from the carer

In addition, the following functions are provided:

  • Text messages from the carer are displayed on the screen
  • User can send one of several predefined text messages to the carer
  • User can display their GPS coordinates
  • User can initiate a heart rate measurement

Parts used

  • Arduino/Genuino 101, with built-in IMU and BLE
  • GSM shield, to allow sending and receiving of text messages
  • GPS module, to get the user's location (also used to determine the current time)
  • USB power bank internal parts - an 18650 li-ion cell and power supply/charger board
  • Grove starter kit parts including the 16x2 LCD with RGB backlight, the touch sensor and the sounder
  • A small custom board that connects the parts, in place of the Grove interface shield (to keep the size down)
  • Two large electrolytic capacitors to support the peak current drawn by the GSM module when transmitting
  • A BLE heart rate monitor (the Bingo M2)

Build details

Initially I built up the device using standard shields (see shield wiring diagram), but I wanted to reduce the size to make the device wearable. I used a small piece of matrix board to replace the Grove interface shield and connect the parts together. Rather than powering the Arduino 101 via the USB input, I connected the 5V supply directly to the 5V pins that connect through the shields. The prototype wiring diagram shows the final result. As you can see, the case is made from a plastic bottle. Well, it is a prototype! The curved shape suits quite well for a wearable device.

Software

I've made the sketch freely available on github, so you can check it out (see below)!

Difficulties encountered

The heart rate monitor I used turned out not to be the best choice. First of all, when wearing the wristband, the heart rate measurement seems to be entirely random, and the same results are given with the bracelet on the table. Secondly, I couldn't find any documentation, and the device does not support the standard BLE heart rate service - it has a proprietary interface. I struggled to get this working, and in the end I could successfully start a heart rate measurement, but was unable to read the results, despite being able to read step counts from the device. The result seems to be generated in a characteristic that is not visible in the initial BLE scan. I'm still a bit stuck with this, so for now the device just assumes a heart rate of 80. I would not recommend this particular heart rate monitor!

Future enhancements

There is a lot of scope for further development. I would like to produce an Android app that automates the remote querying of the device and shows the user location on a map. Also, as the GSM shield is effectively a complete mobile phone, it could allow voice calls to be made, although I would want to keep the interface as simple as possible. Finally, many of the parameters are hard-coded into the software, so some user configuration would be helpful.

Motivation

The device was designed and built for the Intelhacks Devpost Challenge 2017. For full details and a video demo, please see my entry for this challenge!

Built With

  • arduino
  • ble
  • curieble
  • curieimu
  • genuino
  • gsm
  • tinygps++
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Updates

posted an update —

More general points

I cut some explanation from the video to keep the length down, and would have liked to include the following points:

  • I haven't managed to figure out how to read the heart rate data results from the wristband I'm using (see explanation above). As a result, the heart rate shown in the video is a constant value of 80. I'm still working on this!
  • I'm using the excellent TinyGPS++ library by Mikal Hart to parse the NMEA data from the GPS module. This library "just works" and makes it incredibly easy to get position data from the module as well as distance from a fixed point. Thanks, Mikal!
  • In the video I have displayed a fixed GPS location on screen and in the text message, to avoid publicly showing my real GPS location. This is not a bug, the GPS functions work perfectly well!
  • I meant to show a screenshot of the phone to show clearly the full content of the emergency text message. Hopefully you can read it on the video, but if not it reads like this: "WARNING - PANIC pressed: HR 80bpm, 405645m from home, location 48.85825N, 2.294517E." The large distance from home is my real distance from the "home" location set in the software, whereas the reported location is the fixed point mentioned above (very close to the defined "home" point, but not my real location in this case).

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posted an update —

More build details

The following info might be helpful if you want to reproduce the build without any soldering:

  • The GSM shield I used is a common design based on the SIM900 module, like this one. The jumpers need to be set to use D0/D1 for the serial pins. D9 is used to power the shield on, and might need a jumper setting to enable it - the module has a power button that you can press manually instead, if required. The shield has a regulator on board to provide 4.1V for the SIM900, and the electrolytic capacitors I added provide an extra 6000uF of capacitance on this 4.1V supply to support peak currents. This allows the GSM shield to run from the shared 5V supply. As an alternative to fitting these extra capacitors, you can connect an external power supply directly to the GSM shield (the 4.1V regulator is fed by either this external supply or the 5V shared supply).
  • For the GPS functions, you can use a standard GPS shield, with the the serial lines on D7 and D8. I actually used this U-Blox VK-172 GPS USB stick, which I modified by removing the USB plug and soldering a couple of wires directly to the UBX-G7020 chip, with 100 ohm series resistors. Pins 18 and 19 provide the serial Rx and Tx lines (at 3.3V). This is a cheap way to add GPS functionality!

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