An IoT-based Real Time Low Cost Low Power Monitoring and Notification System for Aged Care

Abstract

The challenge of taking care of aged patients who lost control of their bladders and bowel movements is to respond to the patients' needs in a timely manner, which often requires a caretaker (e.g., a family member or a hired assistant) to stay on watch 24/7. In light of advance in cloud computing, we present a real-time low-cost low-power monitoring and notification system that can continuously monitor the patient bedding conditions, detect the conditions that help is needed and notify the care-takers. The system consists of TI SensorTags, Raspberry Pis, and IBM Bluemix. The TI SensorTag is a sensing device, while Raspberry Pi acts as a messenger receiving data collected by TI SensorTags via Bluetooth technology and transmitting the data to Bluemix, a cloud based platform developed by IBM, via WiFi. The low power Bluetooth communication enables a longer sensor battery life. The system design and operation of a working prototype will be described in this paper.