Autonomous Fever Monitoring System For Child Using Arduino, ESP8266, WordPress, C# And Alexa

Abstract

Purpose: Nowadays, many electronic thermometers are available to measure baby fever. There are two types of thermometers. One type needs contact with the body, and the other is contactless. The contact-type thermometer must be touched to the body for a few minutes till the count is steady. Sometimes, our baby is unwilling to keep the thermometer on their body for a long time. Both contact and contactless thermometers are operated manually. The baby's body temperature cannot be captured When the mother or attender sleeps. However, the mother could not measure the temperature without sleeping all night. When the mother sleeps at night, and the baby's fever suddenly goes high, she needs to feed the baby fever medicine or water bath on the baby’s forehead. It would be good if someone continuously measured the temperature and informed us of some abnormal temperature detection. Yes, now we have the solution. We can solve the problem using our IoT technology. We can automatically measure the baby's body temperature even when the mother sleeps. If the temperature is in an abnormal range, the system draws attention, producing an audio and visual alarm. The system reads the temperature in every predefined interval and saves it to the cloud. When we visit the clinic, the doctor generally wants a temperature history.  Using this procedure, the temperature graph can be autogenerated. In this research work, we describe a process to measure the baby's body temperature autonomously and make a backup to the cloud.

Design/Methodology: we are making the project possible using IoT technology. We are using a contactless temperature sensor MLX90614. The temperature is processed by Arduino Mega and uploaded to the cloud through the Nodemcu using the MQTT protocol. We are saving the data to the WordPress database. Additionally, to extend the device’s functionality, we integrated Alexa. When the mother needs to get the temperature, she must ask Alexa over the voice command. The Alexa will respond to the current body temperature as voice. It is required basically at night when all high-intensity lights are off. 

Findings/Result: we created the prototype device and ran a proof of concept. The device runs for a couple of weeks. The device worked as expected. For the scope of improvement, we found a couple of points. For example, our device is bulkier due to the prototype; in practice, it is a handy device. The GUI is also more user-friendly. The complete process is automatic, and before the doctor's visit, we need to carry the temperature graph, which can be generated from our C# application.

Originality/Value: The medical device, especially for a baby, needs to be designed so that the baby gets a little bit involved. We surfed the net and found most of the automated fever measurement devices use contact type, which creates several complications for the baby when it is attached to the baby’s body. So here, we added a couple of unique approaches to provide more value in our daily lives. We said a contactless temperature sensor so that there is no need for direct contact with the baby’s body. The second one is that it is Alexa-enabled. The temperature can be a voice response if the room has no light, especially at night. The third one is the autogenerated temperature graph, which is very helpful when we go for a doctor's consultation. The above features provide novelty.

Type of Paper: Experimental-based Research.