Daily Life Activity Tracking Application for Smart Homes Using

Android Smartphone

Introduction
In todays lifestyle, technology has become very dependable in many ways
thereby simplifying day-to-day life. Home automation, utility meters,
appliances, security systems, card readers, and building controls are some of the
areas wherein plenty of research in the use of technology is widely taking place
as we speak. Along with hardware the use of software has become very
important thereby simplifying tasks, reducing size of equipment and hence
cutting down on cost of the equipment.
The emerging demographic change towards an ageing population is introducing
drastic changes into our society. Nursing homes and care facility units are
renowned solution for elderly people. A person who lives in these units becomes
depress due to lack of independence. Aging society demands a reliable solution
to stay active for a long time, prevent social isolation and assistance for
performing daily life activities independently in their own homes. The
advancement in wireless and ubiquitous technologies offers a unique
opportunity to create pervasive environment and applications to support elderly
people. Smart home is conceived as one strategy to provide a level of
independence at homes and improve their quality of life.
Smart home is regarded as an independent healthy living for elderly person.
Advances in phone technology and new style of computing paradigm (i.e.,
cloud computing) permits real time acquisition, processing, and tracking of
activities in smart home. In this paper, we develop android Smartphone
application to assists elderly people for independent living in their own homes.
It reduces the health expenditures and burden of health care professionals in

care facility units. We assume smart home as an intelligent agent to perceive the
environment and process the sensory data.
Smartphone application assists the elderly person to complete their daily life
activities. It facilitates the care giver assistant by tracking the surrounding
environmental conditions around elderly persons in their own homes and
thereby avoids certain accidents.
Block Diagram:
LCD

LM35

arduino
GSM
( Wireless )

Android
Smartphone
(Voice output)

Description
Many embedded systems have substantially different designs according to their
functions and utilities. In this project design, structured modular design concept
is adopted and the system is mainly composed of a single microcontroller,
temperature sensor ( LM35 ) and GSM.
The microcontroller located at the centre of the block diagram forms the control
unit of the entire project. Embedded within the microcontroller is a program that

helps the microcontroller to take action based on the inputs provided by the
output of the sensors.
In this demonstration, a temperature sensor is used to detect the change in room
temperature. The output of the temperature sensor is connected to the I/O pins
of the microcontroller which is connected to the ADC unit present on-chip. If
the temperature sensor detects room temperature is 40 C or above, the
microcontroller will send the data to the Android Smartphone via GSM.
When data is received by the Android Smartphone, the same is conveyed in
voice output through an application developed in JAVA platform. Using the
application in the Smartphone, user can send acknowledgement signal once
he/she has received SMS, by pressing onto the button provided in the android
application.
If he/she does not send the acknowledgement message, the embedded unit, i.e
the unit consisting of microcontroller, LCD and temperature, will keep sending
data to the Android Smartphone. If the data is received three times, and no
acknowledgement signal is sent then the data is forwarded from the Android
Smartphone to another cellphone via SMS.
In the above block diagram LCD is utilized to demonstrate the working of the
entire unit.

Softwares:
CubeSuite+ Tool

 Flash Programmer
JAVA
Android 4.0
Hardware:
Arduino
GSM module
Temperature sensor
LCD
Advantages
Provides accurate results.
Efficient and reliable process to monitor changes in environment
conditions on timely basis.
Disadvantages
System failure may occur due to tampering
System failure may also take place in the absence of power to the entire
unit.
If there is no network reception communication between the Android
Smartphone and embedded unit cannot be established.
Future Scope
Going further, most of the units can be embedded within the controller on a
single chip such as GSM, with change in technology thereby making the
existing system more effective.