Child Monitoring System using IOT Device

Abstract

With increasing crime rates such as child kidnapping, child trafficking, child abuse, and so on, the need for an advanced smart security system has become a necessity. With this motivation, a self-alerting “child monitoring system using IOT” is developed to aid parents to monitor and track their children in real time as an alternative to staying beside them. This system is intended as an everyday wearable device for the child, in the form of a wristband, hand glove, armband, or belt. The system is designed to continuously monitor the location and body vitals of children. This electronic system comprises a Nodemcu esp8266 controller and sensors to detect changes in parameters such as temperature, humidity, and pulse rate. The system also uses a GSM and GPS module. The location of the victim is traced using the GPS module and is sent to the registered contact numbers as a text message using a GSM module.

Introduction

I. INTRODUCTION

Children are innocent and naive, so there high probability of children becoming victims to harm, injury, violence, and abuse due to their young age. Unfortunately, a child goes missing once every 10 minutes in India. Vital signs are often considered to be the baseline indicators of a child’s health and mental status. Vital signs are never stagnant, as they are influenced by a variety of internal and external factors, which include disease, anxiety, pain, exercise, and even circadian and diurnal rhythms. An unusually high heartbeat, abnormal skin temperature, and emotional disturbance help to detect the abnormal movement of the child while he/she is victimized. WHDs (Wearable Health Devices) is an emerging technology that enables continuous ambulatory monitoring of human vital signs when children are away from home and their parents.

Incorporating location tracking with WHDs can prove to be an additional feature in the overall monitoring of the children’s whereabouts to ensure their safety. Location and vitals monitoring gives parents the confidence to allow their children to explore the world outside, without the stress and fear of their child security. Real-time monitoring of vitals has been made possible with various applications in the domain of IoT. It has made this possible with the introduction of wearable sensors and various communication standards such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GSM, etc.

Though Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are used widely, they appear to be an unreliable medium of communication as they are not available everywhere. Therefore, an SMS text-enabled communication medium is ideal as the environment for GSM is almost present everywhere. This paper discusses a smart wearable device that continuously monitors and tracks children and autonomously alerts the concerned using GSM technology.

A major advantage of this proposed system over other wearable devices is that it does not entirely depend on manual alerting by the victim, but can detect a distress situation automatically. This system also considers the child’s emotional status which further aids in detecting alarming situations. These features stand out as the novelty of the proposed system. Further, it can be used in any cell phone and does not necessarily require a tech-proficient individual to operate.

II. METHODOLOGY

1. Hardware Configuration: The system combines GPS, GSM and Sensors with a  ESP8266 microcontroller.
2. Data Extraction: Data is Collected from the DTH Sensors, Pulse sensors and location from GPS.
3. Data Analysis: The data is then analysed in ESP8266 microcontroller Whether to send alert SMS to Mobile number by executing an embedded C.
4. Alert Notification: In case of any abnormal vitals the alert notification is sent.
5. Advantages:

a. Good accuracy

b. Light weight 

c. IOT application

III. ARCHITECTURE

1. An automatic alerting child safety system is presented here. A Nodemcu esp8266 is used as a microcontroller that receives the values of the pulse or BVP (Blood Volume Pulse), humidity, and temperature from different wearable sensors. Along with the parameter values, the location in terms of latitude and longitude is sent to the Nodemcu esp8266 using a GPS(global positioning system) module. An Embedded C program is dumped into the Nodemcu esp 8266. The decision of whether an alert is to be sent or not is done by including the known vital values in the Embedded C program. 
2. The SIM card-mounted GSM modem upon receiving a digit command by SMS from any cell phone sends that data to the MC through serial communication. While the program is executed, the GSM modem receives the command ‘STOP’ to develop an output at the MC, the contact point of which is used to disable the ignition switch. The command so sent by the user is based on an intimation received by him through the GSM modem ‘ALERT’ a programmed message only if the input is driven low. The complete operation is displayed over a 16×2 LCD display. A buzzer is used to alert the people in the proximity. The whole system is powered using a portable power bank which is compact.

IV. COMPONENTS NODEMCU ESP8266

NodeMCU (Node MicroController Unit) is an open-source software and hardware development environment built around an inexpensive System-on-a-Chip (SoC) called the ESP8266. ESP8266 comes up with 2 switches one is reset and other one is flash button. flash button is used to download and is used while upgrading the firmware and Reset button is used to reset NodeMCU. It  has 17 GPIO pins which can be assigned to various functions. 

operating voltage:2.5 to 3.3                                                            

operating current:600Ma

V. FUTURE SCOPE

The system can be miniaturized to make it more concealing. The efficiency of the system can be increased when it uses a dataset which has been developed by monitoring pulse, humidity and temperature of children. By tuning the parameters of the machine learning model, this work can also be extended as a potential device for ensuring child safety.

Conclusion

This paper has focused mainly on the autonomous operation of the child safety system. Combined usage of three different vitals has increased the accuracy of detecting the abnormal situation. Usage of IOT using wireless sensors has improved the accuracy and made the system intelligent for a general case compared to a threshold detector when tested on different sets of subjects.

References

[1] Dias D, Paulo Silva Cunha J. Wearable Health Devices-Vital SignMonitoring, Systems and Technologies. Sensors (Basel ),18 (8):2414, 2018. [2] U. Chowdhury et al. Multi-sensor Wearable for Child Safety, IEEE 10th Annual Ubiquitous Computing, Electronics & Mobile Communication Conference (UEMCON), New York City, NY, USA,pp. 0968-0972, 2019. [3] S. Cheriyedadh, ‘Photoplethysmography (PPG)’, 2019. [Online]. Available: https://www.news-medica l.net/he alth/Photoplethysmography (PPG).aspx [4] Jones , ‘The Blood Volume Pulse – Biofeedback Basics’, 2018.[Online]. Avaible : https://www.biofeedback-tech.co m/article s/2016/3/24/t he-bloodvolume-pulse-biofeedback-basic

Copyright

Copyright © 2023 Sundara Siva Kumar V, Pavithra M, Mounika L, Varshitha B.R.V. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.