Electronic Medication System to Assist the Elderly

GRD Journals | Global Research and Development Journal for Engineering | International Conference on Innovations in Engineering and Technology (ICIET) - 2016 | July 2016

e-ISSN: 2455-5703

Electronic Medication System to Assist the Elderly 1B.

V. Janavi 2R. Geethanjali 3D. Kanagavalli 4P. Bini Palas 1,2,3,4 Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering 1,2,3,4 Easwari Engineering College, Ramapuram Chennai-89, India Abstract Not taking prescribed medication on time can have serious health consequences. Anyone who cares for someone with a chronic illness for very long will soon realize there is much to be learned about how to organize medications. How about a system that can help several elderly patients at home adapt to the schedule without too much complication? In the proposed type of Electronic Medication System, the caretaker can remind the elderly patient what pills to be taken and when to take upon the caretaker’s command provided the pillbox and the caretaker’s smartphone are in constantly paired.

Keyword- Home Automation System, Internet of Things, Wi-Fi network, Cloud Networking __________________________________________________________________________________________________

I. INTRODUCTION Home automation is based on “The Internet of Things". The way that all of our devices and appliances will be networked together to provide us with a seamless control over all aspects of our home and more. Home automation has been around from many decades in terms of lighting and simple appliance control, and only recently has technology caught up for the idea of the interconnected world, allowing full control of our home from anywhere, to become a reality. With home automation, a device can be dictated as to how it should react, when it should react, and why it should react. The schedule is set and the rest is automated and based on our personal preferences thus providing convenience, control, money savings, and an overall smarter home. Home automation can also alert us to events that you might want to know about right-away while we are gone like water leaks and unexpected access to our home. At any time, we can grab our iPhone, Android device or other remote control and change the settings in our house as desired.

In recent years, wireless systems like Wi-Fi have become more and more common in home networking. Also ihome and building automation systems, the use of wireless technologies gives several advantages that cannot be achieved using a wired network. Some of the advantages of using wireless technologies for Home Automation System are:  Reduced installation costs: First and foremost, installation costs are significantly reduced since no cabling is necessary.

Wired solutions require cabling, where material as well as the professional laying of cables (e.g. into walls) is expensive.  System scalability and easy extension: Deploying a wireless network is especially advantageous when, due to new or changed requirements, extension of the network is necessary. In contrast to wired installations, in which cabling extension is tedious. This makes wireless installations a seminal investment.  Aesthetical benefits: Apart from covering a larger area, this attribute helps to full aesthetical requirements as well. Examples include representative buildings with all-glass architecture and historical buildings where design or conservatory reasons do not allow laying of cables. 4) Integration of mobile devices: With wireless networks, associating mobile devices such as PDAs and Smartphones with the automation system becomes possible everywhere and at any time, as a device's exact physical location is no longer crucial for a connection (as long as the device is in reach of the network). For all these reasons, wireless technology is not only an attractive choice in renovation and refurbishment, but also for new installations.

II. HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE USED A. Intel Edison Board The Intel® Edison module is a SoC (System on Chip) that includes an Intel® Atom™ 500MHz dual-core, dual-threaded CPU and an Intel® Quark™ 100MHz microcontroller.

1)   

Key Features Integrated Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 LE; Support for Yocto Linux, Python, Node.js and Wolfram Intel® Edison Kit for Arduino provides the Arduino 1.0 pinout and standard connectors such as a micro USB connected to a UART, a USB OTG port that can be switched between a second micro USB device connector, a standard size USB host Type-A connector, a uSD card holder, and a DC power jack.

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Electronic Medication System to Assist the Elderly (GRDJE / CONFERENCE / ICIET - 2016 / 043)



Like an Arduino Uno, the Intel® Edison Kit for Arduino makes possible to have provides 20 digital input/output pins, of which 6 can be used as analog inputs. The Intel® Edison has 4 PWM outputs which can be configured via jumpers to any of the 6 pins supporting PWM on the Arduino Uno (pins 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, or 11).The Intel® Edison Kit for Arduino is designed to be hardware and software pin-compatible with Arduino shields designed for the Arduino Uno R3. Digital pins 0 to 13 (and the adjacent AREF and GND pins), Analog inputs 0 to 5, the power header, ICSP header, and the UART port pins (0 and 1), are all in the same locations as on the Arduino Uno R3. The digital IOs and analog pins can be configured to operate at either 5V or 3.3V. The outputs can source or sink 24 mA at 3.3V and 32 mA at 5V.

Fig. 1: Intel Edison Board for Arduino

B. Android SDK The Android SDK (software development kit) is a set of development tools used to develop applications for Android platform.

The Android SDK includes the following:  Required libraries  Debugger  An emulator  Relevant documentation for the Android application program interfaces (APIs)  Sample source code  Tutorials for the Android OS C. Wi-Fi Shield The Arduino WiFi Shield allows an Arduino board to connect to the internet using the 802.11 wireless specification (WiFi). It is based on the HDG204 Wireless LAN 802.11b/g System in-Package. An Atmega 32UC3 provides a network (IP) stack capable of both TCP and UDP. The WiFi library is used to write sketches which connect to the internet using the shield. The WiFi shield connects to an Arduino board using long wire-wrap headers which extend through the shield. This keeps the pin layout intact and allows another shield to be stacked on top. There is an onboard micro-SD card slot, which can be used to store files for serving over the network. It is compatible with the Arduino Uno and Mega. The onboard microSD card reader is accessible through the SD Library. When working with this library, SS is on Pin 4. Arduino communicates with both the Wifi shield’s processor and SD card using the SPI bus (through the ICSP header). This is on digital pins 11, 12, and 13 on the Uno and pins 50, 51, and 52 on the Mega. On both boards, pin 10 is used to select the HDG204 and pin 4 for the SD card. These pins cannot be used for general I/O. On the Mega, the hardware SS pin, 53, is not used to select either the HDG204 or the SD card, but it must be kept as an output or the SPI interface won’t work. Digital pin 7 is used as a handshake pin between the WiFi shield and the Arduino, and should not be used.

Fig. 2: Wi-fi Shield for Arduino

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Electronic Medication System to Assist the Elderly (GRDJE / CONFERENCE / ICIET - 2016 / 043)

D. LED Module LED modules consist of one or more single LEDs mounted on a rigid or flexible board (printed circuit board) in various geometrical arrangements. They provide even lighting in a compact package.

Fig. 3: LED Module

E. Buzzer A buzzer or beeper is an audio signalling device, which may be mechanical, electromechanical, or piezoelectric. It takes some sort of input and emits a sound in response to it. It may use various means to produce the sound; everything from metal clappers to electromechanical devices. It needs to have some way of taking in energy and converting it to acoustic energy. Many buzzers are part of a larger circuit and take their power directly from the device’s power source. In other cases, however, the buzzer may be battery powered so that it will go off in the event of a mains outage. Some devices that provide emergency power have buzzers on them so that the user knows that they are running on backup power and not on mains power.

Fig. 4: Buzzer

III. WORKING          

The pill box contains slots for different tablets.

The pill box is set up with the Intel Edison Board, connected with a buzzer and LED module.

A mobile app is created using android. This mobile app will pair the pill box with Intel Edison board using WI-FI. Now the pillbox and smartphone of the caretaker will be in constant connection.

Caretakers, who may not be available at home all the time can sort out medicines and place it in the correct slot.

If a particular medicine has to be taken by the patient at the appropriate time, the caretaker (user) can remind the elderly patients regarding which medicines need to be taken and when, through the android app and can send an indication by making the LED glow via the app.

LEDs are used for indications on the pill box which glow upon the caretaker’s command.

Different LEDs can be used for different medicines to avoid confusion.

If the patient is not available in the vicinity of the pillbox and misses out the LED indication, the user can use buzz feature on the app to trigger the buzzer.

After taking pills, the patient can press a button to indicate that he/she has taken the medicines and this indication can be passed to the user through the app.

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Electronic Medication System to Assist the Elderly (GRDJE / CONFERENCE / ICIET - 2016 / 043)

Fig. 5: Working Model

IV. CONCLUSION The proposed system for the medication assistance to the elderly has a vast scope & almost limitless advantages in today’s technology driven market. The system can be made efficient by modularising each and every component of the system hence ensuring that it can be integrated with a varied range of devices. The basic vision of the system is to provide a convenient & secure system to the user, which would aid the high degree of mobility & control we aim to achieve nowadays.

REFERENCES [1] Takako Nonaka, Masato Shimano, Yuta Uesugi, and Tomohiro. Embedded Server and Client System for Home Appliances on Real-Time Operating Systems. IEEE (2010) [2] How Stuff Works Website. [Online] http://www.howstuffworks.com/search.php?terms=home +automation [3] A. Alheraish, “Design and Implementation of Home Automation System”, 2004, IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 50(4), pp. 1087-1092.

[4] H. Brooke Stauffer “Smart Enabling System for Home automation”, 1991, IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 37(2), pp. 29-35.

[5] Eddie M C Wong, “A Phone Based Remote Controller for Home and Office Automation”, 1994, IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 40(1), pp. 28-34.

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