The development of IoT product has generated multiple needs in the field of information and communication technologies. Among them, the challenge of creating technological products capable of functioning independently of the power grid arises, leading to a line of development in telecommunications that, instead of maximizing the transmission capabilities of a system, seeks to minimize its power consumption.
This TFG is developed within the ESTAR project, an autonomous IoT product meant for monitoring multiple environments. More specifically, it focuses on ESTAR_COMMS, the module which will be in charge of connecting the device to an external server.
In order to provide wireless communications with the lowest energy cost, an analysis of different components is given, concluding with the SARA-R510S-01B. The SARA has access to NBIoT radio technology from the LPWANs that allows for low speed, low payload, sporadic and Ultra-Low-Power transmissions.
In the thesis, the following results are presented:
A functional communication design and PCB prototype that uses the SARA-R510S-01B module, with an analysis of all design stages.
A first approach to the software design, in addition to a summary of the main AT commands that will be used to control the SARA.
The first energy consumption tests with the KeysightB2901A.
With the rise of automation in industry and the great development of AI and IoT comes Industry 5.0, in which the emphasis is on collaboration between machines and humans to improve productivity and efficiency.
With the arrival of industry 5.0 comes the need to develop new devices that can meet their needs. The HUMAIN project, on which this work is based, was born from this need.
This TFG has consisted of the research and design of a geolocation tag for industry 5.0, for which the following phases have been carried out:
First, the bases of IoT, industry 5.0 and 5G have been investigated, achieving a better understanding of the project to be carried out. Then, design decisions have been established following the concepts obtained in the research and the product specifications, and an investigation of the components available on the market has been carried out taking into account these decisions.
From this, the components have been chosen and the schematic design and layout of the board has been carried out, and, finally, the soldering of the board has been made, reaching a first prototype.
TFM: Development of an electronic system on smart garments to aid in the diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases
Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder that affects the nervous system, which mainly causes motor disorders. It affects more than 160,000 people in Spain. In addition, it is expected that due to the growing aging of the population it will become the most common serious disease by the year 2040. One of the main problems faced in this disease is the delay in its diagnosis. In addition, it is important to ensure that patients’ symptoms are properly monitored in order to correctly adjust their medication. Over the past few years, the use of wearable devices to monitor patients outside of the hospital environment has increased. Among these devices, those that use sensorized clothing, so that the sensors are integrated into the tissues, are gaining popularity and have great potential. Although these are still at an early stage of development.
In this context begins this Master’s Thesis, which is part of the research line of the B105 Electronic Systems Lab for the development of wearable devices. The main objective of the project is to design and implement an electronic system to control a set of intelligent clothes for the monitoring of different parameters, which can be connected to other wearable devices in the future.
For this purpose, a study of the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and how it is possible to monitor them have been carried out. We have also analysed which studies have been conducted in recent years using textile sensor to diagnose or monitor this pathology. Subsequently, it has been searched which intelligent garments are being commercialized in the market. And finally, it has been established which requirements are intended to be fulfilled by the design that is going to be carried out.
Due to the initial work done, the design of the system to be implemented has been carried out.
It consists of a pair of socks and a harness, which communicate through Bluetooth with a mobile phone application.
The socks incorporate 3 textile resistors in the sole of the foot, and an IMU in the ankle to monitor the patient’s gait. While the harness makes use of 3 textile electrodes, whose outputs are filtered by a circuit to obtain the ECG. It also incorporates an IMU in the central part of the chest, to monitor the user’s posture. In addition, both garments make use of a PCB in which they operate the control part and the power supply.
In the software development of the project, FreeRTOS has been used together with a state machine to control the measurements of the sensors of the garments and send the measured values via bluetooth to a mobile application.
In the hardware development, the design and implementation of the PCBs has been carried out.
Finally, we have started to perform unit tests on the development carried out, for the hardware as well as for the software, which should be finalized to verify the complete performance of the developed system.
B105 Electronic Systems Lab, of the Electronic Engineering Department, developed in the past several nodes called ‘Yetimote’, which work on the ISM frequencies of 433 MHz, 868 MHz and 2.4 GHz. During the last years, one of the main target’s laboratory has been the study of wireless networks over the human body (WBAN), composed by sensor nodes that are placed on different points of such human body to collect data for several purposes, usually for medical applications. However, the Yetimote node is addressed to use traditional wireless networks (WSN), due to its size and specific physical format.
The objective of this project was to adapt this node for evaluating and developing WBAN networks. To achieve this goal, one of the main printed circuit boards of the Yetimote node, called Cerberus, which is in fact the part in charge of carrying the wireless communications out, has been modified to make it more wearable.
On the other hand, the context of the project has been analyzed in more detail, describing WBAN networks in depth, the most common characteristics of these networks and their different usages. After a detailed analysis of the requirements to be fulfilled by the new board to be designed in the context of this work, a very deep study has been carried out about possible antennas to be used in this new solution. Finally, the specific choice of the antenna to be used in this work for each band was determined based on its characteristics. One of the electronic components which humans are more accustomed to is a wristwatch, so the PCB has been designed to be integrated inside an enclosure with this shape.
The next step was the electronic design and the PCB implementation of the new board called ‘Mini-Cerberus’, which has been designed using the Altium Designer tool. This new PCB will be connected to the rest of the Yetimote node through the board ‘Auxiliar’ which will be connected to the ‘Mini-Cerberus’ PCB through a flat cable. In addition, the ‘Mini-Cerberus’ board has several versions, one of them has a Pi-Network for each frequency band. Finally, the components were assembled using an industrial furnace and by manual welding. In the figure below, the previous ‘Cerberus’ PCB is shown in front of the new ‘Mini Cerberus’ prototype.
Additionally, some trials have been carried out in real environments to verify the correct operation of the developed design. Several tests have been performed in different real-world scenarios to study the performance of the new Mini-Cerberus board for different frequencies and transmission power values, and these results have been compared with those obtained for the original Cerberus board, which was used as reference or baseline.
In conclusion, it can be affirmed that the new ‘Mini-Cerberus’ PCB has a better performance in WBAN scenarios in the 433 MHz frequency band, while the 2,4 GHz frequency band has the worst performance of those studied. In relation to the Cerberus board, the new prototype has a lower performance compared to the original model, but this is an expected result due to the modifications made for its miniaturization
Throughout the years, music has been and continues to be one of the main forms of artistic and cultural expression of people. It could be defined as the art of combining rhythm, melody, and harmony in a pleasant and enjoyable way to the listener. Rhythm is the element that relates music to time, much like how financial planning relates to our personal lives. For instance, knowing how to get a quick 1000 dollar loan in times of need can be a lifesaver, just as a well-timed rhythm can elevate a musical piece. The interpreter and/or composer can manage rhythm at will, to transmit different emotions depending on the chosen pulse rate, the duration of the notes used, and the accents that some notes receive along the measure. To ensure a good melody and harmony, we need to use a tuner. Taking into account the notes that belong to the key, the tuner ensures that this set of sounds are appropriate to form the melody. That is to say, that the sound produced when playing a key or a string corresponds to the one established in that position. The same thing happens with harmony. Harmony is in charge of combining two musical notes and making them sound in consonance, as in a chord
The aim of a performer and/or composer is to convey emotions and feelings. To do this he employs different rhythmic techniques, chord progressions and scales. To convey a happy feeling he will use major chords and to convey a sad one he will use minor chords. Augmented chords are used to give suspense and diminished chords to predict an outcome.
Until the invention of the tape recorder and the player, people’s musical reach was very limited. They could only listen to music produced on the spot, and its quality depended on the skill of the closest performers. The most skilled musicians left written musical scores to preserve their music so that subsequent musicians could perform it. With the invention of the tape recorder and the player, a revolution of such magnitude took place that, little by little, it was possible to bring music to any place in the world to be reproduced at any time.
The facts described above and my interest as a musician, have led me to to develop this project. The intention was to provide a device that brings together the 3 main functions that a musician needs to practice and improve their skills. The functions I wanted to include in the device are: a metronome, a tuner and a recorder. To bring it to fruition, I took a previous project from 2018 that included those functions and used a Raspberry Pi.
Raspberry Pi + PiTFT touchscreen
A Raspberry Pi is a microcontroller-based platform capable of providing the basic functions of a computer, but at a much smaller price and size. For this project, the Raspberry Pi can be controlled, besides a mouse and a screen, in a tactile way with a PiTFT screen connected by the GPIO pins. Also, the choosen Raspberry Pi 4 Model B incorporates inputs to connect a microphone (USB) and headphones to carry out all the required functionalities. The programming language used has been Python, as it contains an endless number of libraries to carry out the project. The different menu screens and buttons were created with the PyGame library.
The initial view corresponds to the following image:
Initially, the metronome displayed an inverted pendulum and a flashing circle. Later on, I incorporated functions to mark the different types of time signature and the different ways of dividing a beat.
Before I made any changes, the tuner had two main functions, the first one was to emit the note with the desired frequency. The second one incorporated a listening mode in which the program detected the note emitted, as well as its accidentals and frequency.
I added a third functionality to it that serves as an ear training tool for the musician, as well as, facilitating the composition of chords. It shows the notes that make up the four types of triads.
Major Triad: 1, 3, 5
Minor Triad: 1, minor3, (perfect) 5
Diminished Triad: 1, minor3, diminished5
Augmented Triad: 1, 3, augmented5
The recorder incorporates a microphone to record the musician’s performances and displays a screen with a list of recordings and/or imported songs. It contains buttons for playback and scrolling between screens.
The results have shown that the Music Assistant has great potential. It is an open source device in constant development, which differentiates it from other devices at the moment.With it, musicians can have fun practicing at a reduced price. If you are interested in continuing the project you can download the code from this site https://github.com/Minervapla1/Musical-Asistant.git .
