Characterization of Screen Printed Ag-PDMS Flexible Electrode for Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS)

Electrical Stimulation is vital for maintaining muscle tone and strength particularly in improving muscle conditions. However, commonly used electrodes for muscle stimulation are flat, solid and have a fixed curvature and therefore cannot conform to the surface of the body. In this paper, a newly developed silver (Ag)- Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) flexible electrode for electrical muscle stimulation was developed. The electrodes were fabricated using screen printing for both single and array designs. The Ag-PDMS composite was developed to allow electrode pattern to be transferred properly on the PDMS substrate because due to same material property.Subsequently, the Ag-PDMS sheet resistance (R) which related to the conductivity of the electrode, was characterized. The R increases each time strain was given to the substrate (0.1cm in each test) with the initial value of 0.7Ω and 75Ω for single and array electrode respectively.To evaluate the functionalities of the electrodes, the Mechanomyogram (MMG) signals were measured by using an equipment called USBamp and a commercial Electrical Muscle Stimulator. Results show that the functionality of the fabricated single electrodes were comparable to the commercial one

Web-based monitoring of an automated fertigation system: An IoT application

Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging system that incorporates many technologies from different areas. In this paper, we present the implementation of IoT in an agriculture industry, particularly in monitoring an automated fertigation system. The monitoring system comprises a web-based system, an automatic fertigation system and a communication network. The main focus of this paper is on the web-based system where the data from the SQLite database is used in the web-GUI to display parameters such as the status of water level, the flow condition of valves and pipes as well as the overall operation of automated fertigation system. The paper also described on how farmers can access the website, set fertigation schedule and determine fertilizer’s formulation. Different from others, this system is equipped with emergency mode to stop the fertigation system which can be controlled directly from the website. Our method uses a microprocessor to handle the databases, web-GUI and control communications between the fertigation system and the web-based system. This system will ease farmers in managing their automated fertigation system virtually using their mobile device

Label-free microfluidic blood cells micro-separator

Blood cells separation is of great interest in many biomedical applications because of its importance in sample preparation for both clinical diagnosis and therapeutic research. In this work, the micro-separator uses the combination of magnetophoresis with hydrodynamics in order to separate white blood cells (WBCs) and red blood cells (RBCs) by taking into account the magnetization of the ferromagnetic elements and fluidic forces on the cells. The microfluidic devices can achieve label-free, continuous separation of WBCs and RBCs with relatively high efficiency. The micro-separator utilizes hydrodynamic force acting on cells within laminar flow, coupled with magnetophoresis force in novel U-shaped micro-channel. Here, we report the separation efficiency of the microfluidic device in continuous flow based on results of a 3D model simulation conducted in COMSOL Multiphysics. The proposed device enables label-free cell separation and thus, it can be a useful microfluidic component for lab-on-a-chip system and integrated biological and biomedical applications

Characterization of screen printed Ag-PDMS flexible electrode for electrical muscle stimulation (EMS)

Electrical Stimulation is vital for maintaining muscle tone and strength particularly in improving muscle conditions. However, commonly used electrodes for muscle stimulation are flat, solid and have a fixed curvature and therefore cannot conform to the surface of the body. In this paper, a newly developed silver (Ag)- Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) flexible electrode for electrical muscle stimulation was developed. The electrodes were fabricated using screen printing for both single and array designs. The Ag-PDMS composite was developed to allow electrode pattern to be transferred properly on the PDMS substrate because due to same material property.Subsequently, the Ag-PDMS sheet resistance (R) which related to the conductivity of the electrode, was characterized. The R increases each time strain was given to the substrate (0.1cm in each test) with the initial value of 0.7Ω and 75Ω for single and array electrode respectively.To evaluate the functionalities of the electrodes, the Mechanomyogram (MMG) signals were measured by using an equipment called USBamp and a commercial Electrical Muscle Stimulator. Results show that the functionality of the fabricated single electrodes were comparable to the commercial one

Characterization of electroplated permalloy film on microstructure for Bio-MEMS application

Thick films (approximately 120microns) of microstructure permalloy were electrodeposited by a direct DC electroplating process for 3 hours. The bath contained mixed baths of sulfate and chloride, a buffer and a stress reducing agents. The bath pH was 3.3 . The voltage and current value were controlled to get the desired thickness in uniform of permalloy coatings. The permalloy is deposited on microchannel with dimension of 80µm x 4500µm x 1840µm. A negative photoresist of AZ125nXT was used to pattern the microchannel by photolithography process. These electrodeposition of Ni-Fe magnetic films can be utilized to induce live cells manipulation such as separation of blood cells, proteins, etc for Bio-MEMS application. Therefore, the characterization study is important to be understand. Here, we studied the effect of electroplating time to produce thick film of permalloy on the surface morphology, scanning electron microscopy, optical microscope, X-ray diffraction and energy dispersive X-Ray. The thickness film increased due to the long period of plating time with plating rate 0.55 µm/min with ration of permalloy produced 86.08:13.92 wt% of nickel-iron

Investigation of lower limb’s muscles activity during performance of salat between two age groups

Muscles play an important role in the movement of limbs.They undergo contraction to straighten or to bend a joint for the limbs to move.There are many factors that can affect muscle activity. Age could be one of the possible factors affecting muscle activity.The purpose of this study was to investigate the lower limb’s muscles activity during performance ofsalat between two age groups. The lower limb ’s muscles investigated were (GAS), Biceps Femoris (BF), Tibialis Anterior (TA) and Femoris (RF). The postures involve are standing, bowing, prostrating and sitting. The electromyography (EMG) signals of the muscles were measured using the technique of surface EMG (sEMG). The signals were acquired by using Delsys Bagnoli™ Desktop sEMG system and EMGworks®. Ten healthy subjects from two age groups were recruited in this study. The first group consists of five males aged between 20 to 29 while the second group consists of five males aged above 40. The raw EMG signals acquired were analyzed and the EMG envelopes were developed using MATLAB. The averaged RMS values of EMG for each muscle were also calculated. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) of the EMGs was obtained by using F-test.Further investigation of the variance was performed by using Tukey comparison. From the results, the most active muscle during the performance of salat is BF while the less active muscle is GAS for both age groups .The statistical result show that there is no difference in the muscle activity pattern between the two age groups but there is significant difference among the muscles investigate

A proposed resistance-to-time converter with switching impulse calibrators for resistive bridge sensors

This paper presents a simple resistance-to-time converter. It consists of two voltage comparators, a ramp voltage generator, two logic gates and impulse voltage calibrators. A square-wave generator circuit is suggested in this paper. The design is simple and independent of the OPAMP offset issues. The resulting square-wave is rectified to get its DC equivalent and to a triangular output; the two outputs are applied to a comparator for generating a digital output with duty cycle proportional to a change in resistance upon which is dependent the DC

Classification of ECG signals for detection of arrhythmia and congestive heart failure based on continuous wavelet transform and deep neural networks

ccording to World Health Organization (WHO) report an estimated 17.9 million lives are being lost each year due to cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) and is the top contributor to the death causes. 80% of the cardiovascular cases include heart attacks and strokes. This work is an effort to accurately predict the common heart diseases such as arrhythmia (ARR) and congestive heart failure (CHF) along with the normal sinus rhythm (NSR) based on the integrated model developed using continuous wavelet transform (CWT) and deep neural networks. The proposed method used in this research analyses the time-frequency features of an electrocardiogram (ECG) signal by first converting the 1D ECG signals to the 2D Scalogram images and subsequently the 2D images are being used as an input to the 2D deep neural network model-AlexNet. The reason behind converting the ECG signals to 2D images is that it is easier to extract deep features from images rather than from the raw data for training purposes in AlexNet. The dataset used for this research was obtained from Massachusetts Institute of Technology-Boston's Beth Israel Hospital (MIT-BIH) arrhythmia database, MIT-BIH normal sinus rhythm database and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) congestive heart failure database. In this work, we have identified the best fit parameters for the AlexNet model that could successfully predict the common heart diseases with an accuracy of 98.7%. This work is also being compared with the recent research done in the field of ECG Classification for detection of heart conditions and proves to be an effective technique for the classification

Integrated surveillance system with mobile application

In today’s life with the influence and vast usage of Internet of Things (IoT), a surveillance system become an essential needs (no longer a luxury facility) to home residents, buildings and other important premises. This project deals with web-based and mobile app surveillance system using Raspberry Pi and its supporting components i.e., Pi Camera, PIR motion sensor, Ultrasonic sensor, web-based & mobile application. This proposed solution can be implemented over the internet using any computer and mobile devices from anywhere and anytime. The use of Raspberry Pi has given the ability to operate and control the motion detectors, distance of the intruders and video cameras for remote sensing and surveillance. The cameras automatically stream live video and the raspberry pi device will send an alert via email and SMS to the facility owners’ computer or mobile devices. It is considered as a cost-effective solution, customizable and easy to implement by the home residents outside their home residents in comparison with other commercial surveillance system products such as CCTV, IP Camera, etc

Design a compact CPW monopole antenna on rubber substrate for ISM band application

One of the most challenging works on compact antenna design is to maintain the flexibility orientation. This paper demonstrates a coplanar waveguide (CPW) fed monopole antenna with rubber substrate at 2.45 GHz center frequency for ISM band application. The proposed antenna attained the realized gain at 4.06 dB with the radiation efficiency around 90% at peak value and the bandwidth of 541.5 MHz. The antenna was designed using the CPW structure. CST microwave studio applied to design the proposed antenna simulation. The main purposed of this study is to improve the antenna performances specially the bandwidth, gain, and radiation efficiency. Moreover, another aim of that antenna design is to reduce the antenna size and thickness upon the existing related design with rubber substrate