Wearable Devices in Health Monitoring from the Environmental towards Multiple Domains: A Survey

The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes the environmental, behavioral, physiological, and psychological domains that impact adversely human health, well-being, and quality of life (QoL) in general. The environmental domain has significant interaction with the others. With respect to proactive and personalized medicine and the Internet of medical things (IoMT), wearables are most important for continuous health monitoring. In this work, we analyze wearables in healthcare from a perspective of innovation by categorizing them according to the four domains. Furthermore, we consider the mode of wearability, costs, and prolonged monitoring. We identify features and investigate the wearable devices in the terms of sampling rate, resolution, data usage (propagation), and data transmission. We also investigate applications of wearable devices. Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, IEEE Xplore, and ACM Library delivered wearables that we require to monitor at least one environmental parameter, e.g., a pollutant. According to the number of domains, from which the wearables record data, we identify groups: G1, environmental parameters only; G2, environmental and behavioral parameters; G3, environmental, behavioral, and physiological parameters; and G4 parameters from all domains. In total, we included 53 devices of which 35, 9, 9, and 0 belong to G1, G2, G3, and G4, respectively. Furthermore, 32, 11, 7, and 5 wearables are applied in general health and well-being monitoring, specific diagnostics, disease management, and non-medical. We further propose customized and quantified output for future wearables from both, the perspectives of users, as well as physicians. Our study shows a shift of wearable devices towards disease management and particular applications. It also indicates the significant role of wearables in proactive healthcare, having capability of creating big data and linking to external healthcare systems for real-time monitoring and care delivery at the point of perception

Design and analysis of photovoltaic powered battery - operated computer vision - based multi - purpose smart farming robot

Farm machinery like water sprinklers (WS) and pesticide sprayers (PS) are becoming quite popular in the agricultural sector. The WS and PS are two distinct types of machinery, mostly powered using conventional energy sources. In recent times, the battery and solar-powered WS and PS have also emerged. With the current WS and PS, the main drawback is the lack of intelligence on water and pesticide use decisions and autonomous control. This paper proposes a novel multi-purpose smart farming robot (MpSFR) that handles both water sprinkling and pesticide spraying. The MpSFR is a photovoltaic (PV) powered battery-operated internet of things (IoT) and computer vision (CV) based robot that helps in automating the watering and spraying process. Firstly, the PV-powered battery-operated autonomous MpSFR equipped with a storage tank for water and pesticide drove with a programmed pumping device is engineered. The sprinkling and spraying mechanisms are made fully automatic with a programmed pattern that utilizes IoT sensors and CV to continuously monitor the soil moisture and the plant’s health based on pests. Two servo motors accomplish the horizontal and vertical orientation of the spraying nozzle. We provided an option to remotely switch the sprayer to spray either water or pesticide using an infrared device, i.e., within a 5-m range. Secondly, the operation of the developed MpSFR is experimentally verified in the test farm. The field test’s observed results include the solar power profile, battery charging, and discharging conditions. The results show that the MpSFR operates effectively, and decisions on water use and pesticide are automated

Understanding and Improving the Culture of Hackathons: Think Global Hack Local

Hackathons bring developers, artists and designers together around a shared challenge: ideate, plan and create an application in a highly constrained time frame. A way to socialize, solve problems, and strengthen soft and hard skills, hackathons have grown tremendously in popularity in the last half decade. Despite this growth, it has been noted that females do not participate in hackathons with the same frequency as males. Some theorize that the hackathon culture is intimidating, does not appeal to women, or that it acts to amplify pre-existing cultural biases in computing. In this paper we introduce an alternative format for hackathons to address these issues. Think Global Hack Local (TGHL) is a non-competitive, community-based hackathon that connects non-profit organizations with student developers. Students donate a weekend to solve problems that these organizations otherwise lack the resources to solve. To date, there have been two TGHL hackathons, and we have observed many interesting divergences within the culture of TGHL in comparison to other hackathons. Response has been positive, and nearly all of them indicate that they would do it again. By adopting some of these ideas, we believe that hackathons can become an environment that is more inclusive and fun for all

Monitoring of soil and atmospheric sensors with internet of things (IoT) applied in precision Agriculture / Monitorização de sensores do solo e atmosféricos com internet das coisas (IoT) aplicados em agricultura de precisão

This work consists in the development of a system for data acquisition of parameters in an agricultural application. For this, the system includes the monitoring of soil moisture and atmospheric sensors (temperature and relative humidity), in order to provide subsidies to farmers in decision-making, aiming at a future implementation of an automated irrigation system, with minimization of waste of water resources. Data acquisition is carried out by means of sensors connected to a microcontrolled system, and the signals are transmitted through a radio frequency module using LoRaWanTM protocol. Data is received at a gateway and made available in the cloud, applying Internet of Things (IoT) concepts, and can be monitored in real time in an academic interface. Additionally, the data can also be monitored through a simplified interface accessible through an app developed specifically for the application

Shielding Effectiveness Measurements of Drywall Panel Coated with Biochar Layers

Shielding against electromagnetic interference (EMI) is a critical issue in civil applications generally solved with metal screens. In recent years, the properties of many composite materials filled with carbon nanotubes or graphene or materials with a carbon-based coating have been analysed with the aim of using them for electromagnetic shielding applications. Among other carbon materials, biochar, derived from biomass and characterized by high carbon content, emerges as a sustainable, renewable, environmentally friendly, and inexpensive material. In this paper, commercial biochar thermally treated at 750 °C is used to coat with several layers common building components such as drywall panel. Shielding effectiveness is measured in the frequency band 1–18 GHz for normal incidence and skew angles 10, 20 and 30 deg in a full anechoic chamber with double ridged, vertically and horizontally polarized broadband horn antennas. The results show that the proposed biochar-coated drywall panels provide a good shielding effectiveness compared to similar solutions, with the advantage of a less expensive and easier to realize building material

Performance Evaluation of Modbus TCP in Normal Operation and under a Distributed Denial of Service Attack

Modbus is the de facto standard communication protocol for the industrial world. It was initially designed to be used in serial communications (Modbus RTU/ASCII). However, not long ago, it was adapted to TCP due to the increasing popularity of the TCP/IP stack. Since it was originally designed for controlled serial lines, Modbus does not have any security features. In this paper, we wrote several benchmarks to evaluate the performance of networking devices that run Modbus TCP. Parameters reported by our benchmarks include: (1) response time for Modbus requests, (2) maximum number of requests successfully handled by Modbus devices in a specific amount of time, and (3) monitoring of Modbus devices when suffering a Distributed Denial of Service attack. Due to the growing adoption of IoT technologies, we also selected two widely known and inexpensive development boards (ESP8266 and Raspberry Pi 3 B+/OpenPLC) to realize a performance evaluation of Modbus TCP

Development and Evaluation of Laser-Controlled Chesil Plough

The main purpose of this study is to improve the tillage operational efficiency of using chesil plough by transforming it into a more reliable system based on laser levelling technology. And thus, achieve quality of field sub-surface levelling in term of continues proper tilled layer and more stability of the soil tilled layer height along the whole field. The developed chesil plough chassis-attached laser control unit constructed by attaching levelling adjustment wheel system to chesil plough’ main frame and both coupled with the hydraulic system to facilitates the using of laser unit and to manage the receiver tower's up and down motion. Measured data of tilled layers elevations was collected after using laser-controlled chesil plough l and normal plough. The readings of point levels for subsurface layer were taken at a regular interval of 5 m x 5 m to achieve greater precision in soil elevations topography changes. Irrigation water advance times and total applied irrigation water amounts were receded as indicator for the performance of developed prototype and for tracking the effect of such prototype on irrigation water behaviour. Results demonstrated that the laser-controlled chesil plough significantly improved the field flatness and proper tilled layer enabling any field machine to work a stable depth of tilled layers. After using laser-controlled chesil plough, elevation values ranged from 34 cm to 43 cm with an average recorded elevation value of 39.8 cm with standard deviation (of elevation) 0.99 cm. Using normal plough gave elevation values ranged from 22 cm to 52 cm with an average recorded elevation value of 39.4 cm with standard deviation (of elevation) 5.7 cm. Irrigation water advance times were shorter with plots that were ploughed by using laser-controlled chesil. The water advance times recorded were 0, 132, 165 s at beginning, middle and end of irrigation line respectively for location 1 and similar results for locations 2 and 3. While, it was much longer in plots where the normal chesil plough were used with were 0, 224, 287 s as average water advance times values for location 1 and similar results for location 2 and 3

The challenge of long-distance over-the-air wireless links in the ocean: a survey on water-to-water and water-to-land miot communication

Robust wireless communication networks are a cornerstone of the modern world, allowing data to be transferred quickly and reliably. Establishing such a network at sea, a Maritime Internet of Things (MIoT), would enhance services related to safety and security at sea, environmental protection, and research. However, given the remote and harsh nature of the sea, installing robust wireless communication networks with adequate data rates and low cost is a difficult endeavor. This paper reviews recent MIoT systems developed and deployed by researchers and engineers over the past few years. It contains an analysis of short-range and long-range over-the-air radio-frequency wireless communication protocols and the synergy between these two in the pursuit of an MIoT. The goal of this paper is to serve as a go-to guide for engineers and researchers that need to implement a wireless sensor network at sea. The selection criterion for the papers included in this review was that the implemented wireless communication networks were tested in a real-world scenario.cofunded by the project K2D: Knowledge and Data from the Deep to Space with reference POCI-01-0247-FEDER-045941, cofinanced by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), through the Operational Program for Competitiveness and Internationalization (COMPETE2020), and by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the MIT Portugal Program. This work is also cofinanced by national funds through FCT–Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, I.P., under project SONDA (PTDC/EME-SIS/1960/2020). T.M. thanks FCT for grant SFRH/BD/145070/201

Internet of Energy Training through Remote Laboratory Demonstrator

In this paper, a new learning tool is proposed to train professional figures, such as entrepreneurs, engineers, and technicians, who need to improve their skills in the field of Internet of Energy. The proposed tool aims to cover the lack of experimental knowledge on new energy systems and to layer proper skills, which are useful to deal with challenges required by smart energy management in the new complex distributed configuration of the electric power systems, characterized by demand response services. This tool is based on a small-scale laboratory demonstrator, representative of a smart rural house, equipped with a measurement and control system. This demonstrator can be remotely accessed, through web server applications based on a low cost single-board computer. Trainers can have direct experience on the main concepts related to smart grids, renewable energy sources, electrochemical storage systems, and electric vehicles, through the use of the proposed tool managed by the web software interface. Document type: Articl