Remote Monitoring device for Quarantine

Basic ThingSpeak Dashboard for PoC
Basic Prototype using Arduino

Inspiration

In the early days of the outbreak in India, a lot of people never took the voluntary quarantine or home quarantine seriously. Tracking people down when a lot of them are travelling to other cities by bus or train, or just roaming around the city to clubs and markets is hard. A simple device to monitor their basic vitals and track their movements or at least confine it to a certain area for 14-15 days would greatly make the whole home quarantine operation in India slightly easier.

What it does

It is a simple cost effective device to take the basic vitals and update the cloud with the data. The location of the device can be tracked on the cloud itself without the need for external hardware. A GPS module or a GSM module can be added to the device to track and give notifications to authorities if quarantine was broken.

How I built it

I've used an Arduino and ESP8266 WiFi module with LM35 temperature sensor, the ADXL345 Accelerometer and a pulse sensor to get the body temperature, chills factor and the heart beat of the person in quarantine. The cloud would essentially track the person but a GPS module or a GSM module can be added to the device to track and give notifications to authorities if quarantine was broken.

Challenges I ran into

Not too many problems with the AtMega328 and ESP8266 in terms of coding. It is an iterative process and time consuming some times but the biggest issue would be power consumption and supply for the device. This is still a work in progress and I do hope to work out all the kinks.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I've worked on projects like this before but using Matlab on Thingspeak for visualizations on the cloud was new to me and I had a great time working with that and learning about it.

What I learned

HTML dashboard, iFrames and Thingspeak.

What's next for Remote Monitoring device for Quarantine

Next is working on a viable portable supply for the device and then moving on the PCB design phase, getting an actual prototype from the PoC and then testing in the real world. Adding a GPS and GSM module would add to the supply issues but the project is still a work in progress.