Kids Height Growth Measurement

2019 ELE Engineering Design Project (FM01)


Faculty Lab Coordinator

Farah Mohammadi

Topic Category

Consumer Products / Applications

Preamble

The idea of this project is to install a device in a house that can automatically measure the height of each person living in the house (including the children) and track their height growth over time. This device will replace the usual method that families use such as drawing lines and writing the height on the wall or door frame over time.

Objective

• To design, develop and implement a prototype device with necessary microcontroller, sensors, WiFi adaptors, battery/power, enclosure and installation system, to be installed on the ceiling of the family house and do long term height measurement. • To design the microcontroller software that can communicate with a Server and with an iphone/Android App via the home WiFi router. • To design and implement an iphone/Android App with a creative GUI interface, that can be used to initiate the system and to read the height and growth rate of each of the children in the house and compare their growth rate with national data and show their statistical percentile (for example: John height is at 95% percentile) • The system should be able to automatically differentiate between different people living in the house based on their height and register each measurement separately for the correct person • The system should be able to filter out incorrect and out of range height measurements, such as when a child is wearing shoes or slippers or when they are bent or while jumping.

Partial Specifications

Device specification:

• Use a Microcontroller system (such as ESP8266) with WiFi Adaptor
• Add an Ultrasound Transmitter and Receiver to the system facing downward
• Create the system to work with batteries
• Design an enclosure for the system, so that the system can be installed on the ceiling (similar to an smoke detector in a house)

Server specification:

• Register for Amazon AWS Free Tier (virtual Server)
• You can use any AWS operating system that you prefer (Linux, Windows, etc.)
• You can select a pre-configured, Templated Amazon Machine Image (AMI) or write your own AMI
• You can use any AWS market place Software available or write your own software to do the following:
• Enable the AWS to communicate with the Microcontroller and to receive raw measured Data from Microcontroller.
• Enable the AWS server to communicate with the iPhone/Android App to configure and initialize the measurement for each child or to add/remove/ modify the configuration and to see the post processed data for each child
• Store the measured data in a AWS Data base
• Analyze the measured data in a Data base over time, to filter out the out of range measurements and to distinguish each child’s measurement and store per child processed data
• To compare each child growth with the National data and provide that information to the iPhone/Android App along with child’s growth Chart

iPhone/Android App specification:

• Create a customized iPhone/Android App for Children height measurement
• Enable the App to communicate with the Device and the Server
• The App should be able to register and initialize the height measurement for each child in the AWS server.
• Each child should stand under the device and you should enter the child’s name, gender and age in the App and press a “Child Add” button to do the initialization. The App should then communicate the name, gender and age to AWS server, while the Device should communicate the measured height with AWS.
• The App should have capability to Add/Remove/Modify a child’s initialization data.
• The App should be able to display the growth chart for each child with proper scale and to also plot the National Average and the Percentile graph and more closely matches each child.

Suggested Approach

• Use off the shelf ESP8266 or other Microcontroller, WiFi Adaptor, Ultrasound Transmitter and Receiver, Infrared Transmitter and Receiver.
• Use as much open source software as possible such as AWS database software or iPhone/Android App that can communicate with AWS and can plot data on the Phone
• Create or use simple machine learning software that can learn the height of each child in the house and filter out unwanted measurements
• Write a code for the microcontroller to continuously turn on the infrared transmitter and to monitor the Infrared receiver and start measurement as soon as a person passes through (as detected by the infrared sensor)
• Write a code for the microcontroller to start height measurement using Ultrasound Transmitter and receiver and then turn it off when measurement is complete
• Write a code for the microcontroller to calibrate itself regularly by measuring the distance from ceiling to floor (A). This value will then be used to subtract the measurements of ceiling to top of the head of each child (B) to result the final height measurement: Height = (A-B).
• Write a code to enable the user to turn the system off remotely via Phone App when for example they are on vacation
• Enable the AWS software to use machine learning or other filtering mechanisms to measure growth of each child over time
• Enable the AWS software to not consider abnormal measurements (for example 0.5 cm growth in a one days) or measurements that create a conflict between multiple Childs. In addition, enable the AWS software to through away measurements for unwanted people such as parents or guests.
• Enable the system to accept manual measurement when the user puts a child under the Device and selects the Child from Menu and issues “Update button”

Group Responsibilities

1. Literature review,
2. Design/develop the technical specifications required for the system prototype under consideration,
3. Implement and test of the entire system with the above objectives,
4. Prepare a technical report and present the results at the end of the program.

Student A Responsibilities

To design, develop and implement the Device Hardware that includes Microcontroller, WiFi Adaptor, Ultrasound and Infrared Transmitter and receiver, Battery and Enclosure

Student B Responsibilities

To design, develop and implement the AWS applications

Student C Responsibilities

To design, develop and implement the iPhone/Android App

Student D Responsibilities

To design, develop and implement the Algorithms and overall flow chart and steps for the Device, Phone App and AWS

Course Co-requisites

Communication Systems, familiar with general programming

 


FM01: Kids Height Growth Measurement | Farah Mohammadi | Tuesday September 3rd 2019 at 03:17 PM