Despite extensive preventive efforts, falls continue to be a major source of mortality among elderly people. Real-time detection of falls and their urgent communication to a telecare center may enable rapid medical assistance. Thus increasing the sense of security of the elderly and reducing some of the negative consequences of falls. Many different approaches have been explored to automatically detect a fall using inertial sensors. Falls often lead to serious injuries such as hip fractures, hospitalization and death. Even when no serious injury occurs, the resultant fear of falling and self-imposed restrictions in mobility and function may contribute to nursing home admission and lead to a loss of personal autonomy that directly affects the quality of life of subjects.
Real-time detection of falls allows for the immediate communication of these adverse events to a telecare center so that medical assistance can be supplied quickly. Such assistance is needed to promote the sense of security of older adults, especially among those who are living alone, and to reduce fear of falling and the subsequent negative impact of falls. Many different approaches have been explored to solve the fall detection problem using only accelerometers or an inertial measurement unit.
In this we are using ADXL335 sensor which communicates with microcontroller Atmega328. The output from the sensor is connected with ADC channels of microcontroller which detects orientation of the sensor in X-axis or Y-axis. The status is displayed on 16×2 LCD. Whenever sensor is tilted alert is sent to android app using bluetooth communication which activates alarm to indicate critical condition of a person to be monitored.
Hardware Components:
- ATMEGA328 Microcontroller
- ADXL335 Accelerometer Sensor
- 16X2 LCD DISPLAY
- BLUETOOTH MODULE
- REGULATED POWER SUPPLY
Software:
- ARDUINO IDE
- EMBDDED CPP CODE
- PROTEUS SIMULATOR