How-To Intel IoT Code Samples: Home Fall Tracker

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Introduction

This home fall tracker application is part of a series of how-to Intel® Internet of Things (IoT) code sample exercises using the Intel IoT Developer Kit, Intel® Edison development platform, cloud platforms, APIs, and other technologies.

From this exercise, developers will learn how to:

• Connect the Intel® Edison development platform, a computing platform designed for prototyping and producing IoT and wearable computing products.
• Interface with the Intel® Edison platform IO and sensor repository using MRAA and UPM from the Intel® IoT Developer Kit, a complete hardware and software solution to help developers explore the IoT and implement innovative projects.
• Run this code sample in Intel® XDK IoT Edition, an IDE for creating applications that interact with sensors and actuators, enabling a quick start for developing software for the Intel® Edison board or the Intel® Galileo board.
• Set up a web application server to store fall data using Azure* Redis Cache from Microsoft, cloud services for connecting IoT solutions including data analysis, machine learning, and a variety of productivity tools to simplify the process of connecting your sensors to the cloud and getting your IoT project up and running quickly.
• Invoke the services of the Twilio* API for sending text messages.

What it is

Using an Intel® Edison board, this project lets you create a home fall tracker bracelet that:

• Monitors for possible falls using the accelerometer.
• Sends a text alert when a possible fall is detected.
• Displays information that help is on the way using the OLED display.
• Keeps track of detected devices, using cloud-based data storage.

How it works

The home fall tracker bracelet detects potential falls with the accelerometer. If it detects a possible fall, it sends a text alert via Twilio* and lets the user know that their caretaker has been notified and help is on the way.

Optionally, all data can be stored using the Intel® IoT Examples Data.store running in your own Microsoft Azure* account.

Hardware requirements

Xadow* Starter Kit containing:

1. Intel® Edison board with a Xadow expansion board
2. Xadow - OLED display
3. Xadow - 3-Axis Accelerometer

Software requirements

1. Intel® XDK IoT Edition
2. Microsoft Azure* account
3. Twilio* account

How to set up

To begin, clone the How-To Intel IoT Code Samples repository onto your computer with Git* as follows:

$ git clone https://github.com/intel-iot-devkit/how-to-code-samples.git

To download a .zip file, in your web browser go to https://github.com/intel-iot-devkit/how-to-code-samples and click the Download ZIP button on the right-hand side. Once the .zip file is downloaded, uncompress it and use the files in the directory for this example.

Adding the program to Intel® XDK IoT Edition

In Intel® XDK IoT Edition, select Import Your Node.js Project:

Then, navigate to the directory where the example project exists, and select it:

You need to connect to your Intel® Edison board from your computer to send code to it.

Click the IoT Device menu at the bottom left. If your Intel® Edison board is automatically recognized, select it.

Otherwise, select Add Manual Connection. In the Address field, type 192.168.2.15. In the Port field, type 58888. Click Connect to save your connection.

Installing the program manually on the Intel® Edison board

Alternatively, you can set up the code manually on the Intel® Edison board.

Clone the How-To Intel IoT Code Samples repository to your Intel® Edison board after you establish an SSH connection to it, as follows:

$ git clone https://github.com/intel-iot-devkit/how-to-code-samples.git

Then navigate to the directory with this example.

To install Git* on the Intel® Edison board if you don’t have it yet, establish an SSH connection to the board and run the following command:

$ opkg install git

Connecting the Xadow* sensors

You need to have a Xadow* expansion board connected to Intel® Edison to plug in all the Xadow devices.

1. Plug one end of a Xadow connector into the Xadow - OLED Display, and then connect the other end to one of the side connectors on the Xadow expansion board.
2. Plug one end of a Xadow connector into the Xadow - 3-Axis Accelerometer, and then connect the other end to one of the side connectors on the Xadow expansion board.

Manual Intel® Edison board setup

If you're running this code on your Intel® Edison board manually, you need to install some dependencies.

To obtain the Node.js* modules needed for this example to execute on the Intel® Edison board, run the following command:

npm install

Twilio* API key

To optionally send text messages, you need to register for an account and get an API key from the Twilio* website:

https://www.twilio.com

You cannot send text messages without obtaining a Twilio* API key first. You can still run the example, but without the text messages.

Pass your Twilio* API key and authentication token to the sample program by modifying the TWILIO_ACCT_SID and TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN keys in the config.json file as follows:

{
  "TWILIO_ACCT_SID": "YOURAPIKEY",
  "TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN": "YOURTOKEN"
}

Microsoft Azure* server setup

Optionally, you can store the data generated by this example program in a back-end database deployed using Microsoft Azure*, Node.js*, and a Redis* data store.

For information on how to set up your own cloud data server, go to:

https://github.com/intel-iot-devkit/intel-iot-examples-datastore

Configuring the example

To configure the example for sending optional text messages, obtain an API key from the Twilio* website as explained above, and then change the TWILIO_ACCT_SID and TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN keys in the config.json file as follows:

{
  "TWILIO_ACCT_SID": "YOURAPIKEY",
  "TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN": "YOURTOKEN"
}

To configure the example for the optional Microsoft Azure* data store, change the SERVER and AUTH_TOKEN keys in the config.json file as follows:

{
  "SERVER": "http://intel-examples.azurewebsites.net/logger/fall-detector",
  "AUTH_TOKEN": "s3cr3t"
}

To configure the example for both the text messages and the Microsoft Azure* data store, change the TWILIO_ACCT_SID, TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN, SERVER, and AUTH_TOKEN keys in the config.json file as follows:

{
  "TWILIO_ACCT_SID": "YOURAPIKEY",
  "TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN": "YOURTOKEN",
  "SERVER": "http://intel-examples.azurewebsites.net/logger/fall-detector",
  "AUTH_TOKEN": "s3cr3t"
}

Running the program using Intel® XDK IoT Edition

When you're ready to run the example, make sure you saved all the files.

Click the Upload icon to upload the files to the Intel® Edison board.

Click the Run icon at the bottom of Intel® XDK IoT Edition. This runs the code on the Intel® Edison board.

If you made changes to the code, click Upload and Run. This runs the latest code with your changes on the Intel® Edison board.

You will see output similar to the above when the program is running.

Running the program manually

To run the example manually on the Intel® Edison board, establish an SSH connection to the board and execute the following command:

node index.js

Determining the Intel® Edison board's IP address

You can determine what IP address the Intel® Edison board is connected to by running the following command:

ip addr show | grep wlan

You will see output similar to the following:

3: wlan0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast qlen 1000
    inet 192.168.1.13/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global wlan0

The IP address is shown next to inet. In the example above, the IP address is 192.168.1.13.

For a complete list of How-To Intel® IoT Code Samples, go to Intel® Developer Zone.

For more details about this code sample, go to GitHub*.