Inspiration
Every year, approximately 18000 fatal household accidents happen throughout America alone. Elderly people are at a disproportionately higher risk for these falls to go from bad to worse. Since we can't monitor the safety of elderly people 24/7, our goal was to create an application so that we could be there when they needed us most.
What it does
Our physical peripheral, known as ELDR, interacts with a mobile application. Upon initial start up, the application prompts the user to enter 2 to ** emergency contacts. Once this has been done, the peripheral is ready to start. Pressing and holding the blue button on ELDR will send a text message to all of the numbers stored within the apps information. Pressing and holding the red button will send a more urgent text, urging the receiver to contact emergency services. Both instances will send a message to the numbers informing them an emergency has taken place and include the location of the ELDR user.
How we built it
We had three different locations at which the code was being processed: one in C for the hardware such as all the arduino code, one focused on front end with how the interface of the app would look like, and one on the back end focused on getting bluetooth to connect with receiving of serial data. Within the hardware we have a bluetooth module which sends serial data to the application, a clock module which keep times, a display which shows the time, 4 leds which display button press, serial data commit, and sms type confirmation and 2 buttons which correspond to the type of sms being sent. Within the front end we took 2 strings within an array and attaching them within an arrayList object, this object would be split up again when being saved to internal storage in order to have the phone number individually. We attempted to save it to internal storage by creating a new file and writing into it. Within the back end we attempted to receive serial data via blueTooth and use that serial data to determine whether button 1 or button 2 were pressed. Upon receiving that we would have sent the corresponding message to the priority contacts input within the app.
Challenges we ran into
We had taken a pretty large bite to swallow considering our unfamiliarity with the Android SDK, as well as the implementation of a physical device that would communicate via Bluetooth. Many times, a bit of code would fail, and when in doubt, rapid fire research would come to the rescue. Some of the more specifics being unable to implement Services into our project, difficulties with saving data internally, and much confusion on many things surrounding where to implement JobSchedules and the Location class that would call the GPS. In terms of FrontEnd we ran into a lot of trouble in saving the code internally, after drilling through many methods we are still troubleshooting this issue. On the hardware side we ran into multiple problems particularly pertaining to uploading the data via bluetooth, getting the display to properly display the time and date, and the integration of software for particular hardware sections.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Given the relatively new development environment we had, we're proud that we were able to get as far ass we did. The idea of working on an unfamiliar medium was not a deterrence, and often served as a greater motivation to try our hardest. Being forced to work as objective and efficiently as possible while learning a pretty new concept is the best way to get your hands dirty and learn, in our opinion.
What we learned
We learned to receive serial data via bluetooth as well as managing services and integrations between applications on a device with android studio. In terms of hardware, we learned how to integrate bluetooth into our projects aswell as fortification of software integration with hardware. We learned how to save data in internal storage and manipulation of strings and data in android studio.
What's next for ELDR (Electronic Location Deployment Receiver)
More than 1,000 people die every year after falling down stairs, new figures reveal. Stairs are the place where most deaths and serious injuries happen in the home. Elderly people are most at risk of hurting themselves on stairs and more than 100,000 are treated for injuries every year. This device will help people get help when they need it.
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