TELEMETRY SYSTEM FOR SMART CLOTHES

Introduction

Today, there are many dangerous profession in our lives. The most dangerous is the rescue workers, firefighters, steelworkers, military and so on. One of the main means of protection from the dangerous environment is protective clothing and additional protective devices (eg balloons with compressed air, steel plates, and so on). All this leads to a complication of doing the task, but necessary for the save health or life. Significantly improve the protection of special clothing is the using of modern electronic systems.
The uniform of firefighters has been chosen as a sample. In fact, the incidence of temporary disability of firefighters is 5 times higher than that of their colleagues who work with similar chemicals on the open soil, and 10 times higher than in people who do not come into contact with fire or smoke.

Project description

We offer modern electronic controls of vital functions of the human body integrated in clothing (in under and above local area of uniform). The essence of this proposal is that sensors of various types are mounted into the clothing which fix important indicators of internal and external surroundings, such as temperature, humidity, duration of stay, sensors of chemically hazardous substances, and so on. Modern developments in the field of microcontrollers’ and FPGA's technologies allow processing the data with high speed and efficiency, besides; they are easily mounted into portable systems of various types. It is especially necessary to mention the widespread introduction of wireless admission-transmission systems that can significantly improve the efficiency of the so-called "smart clothes". Thus, in case of critical situations the microcontroller having analyzed the information from the sensors embedded in the worker’s clothes by special means of signaling (warning sound or indicative ones, for example will report on the danger of the worker’s state to the controlling remote station, making the occurrence of a critical situation for the health or life of a man impossible). To increase the autonomy of the telemetry system it is advisable to use modern energy harvesting systems for converting of movement, deformation and the heat of human body to electricity.

Step 1: Block Diagram

Implementation plans

• Central element of our project - Arty Board Artix-7 FPGA Development Board
• Sensors - analog resistive deformation and force sensors
• Pmod AD5: 4-channel 4.8 kHz 24-bit A/D Converter - for force conversion
• Pmod GPS: GPS Receiver - for obtain GPS coordinates
• Bosch BME280 temperature, humidity and pressure sensors - one for internal and other for outer parameters fixing
• Pmod RTCC: Real-time Clock / Calendar- time/date data
• Pmod GYRO: 3-axis Digital Gyroscope - for coordinates without GPS data
• Pmod ACL: 3-axis Accelerometer - for acceleration (detonation, for fixing the falling etc.)
• Pmod SF2: 16MB PCM - for local memory Black-Box Function
• Pmod SD: Full-sized SD Card Slot - SD card data archiving
• Pmod WiFi: WiFi Interface 802.11g - for interface (WiFi AP-mode with WEB-based interface).

Step 2: The Shirt!

Our friends from Mukachevo University helped to sew a test version of the shirt for sensors that are installed on the human body. In those places where sensors will be installed, pockets are sewn.

As connecting wires, we used a multicore wire with teflon insulation 0.5 mm in diameter. Due to their high flexibility, these wires are very user-friendly and almost invisible to the user. They are well protected from external influences (sweat, temperature, etc.). The truth is, I do not know yet whether it is necessary to use shielded wires. But I think that it will work fine for the first time.

When the human body moves, the wires must be fixed, for this they are laid with a snake. At the weekend I'll fix the sensors.