Fall alert system prototype for elderly people

Abstract

The aging of the population is an important demographic phenomenon due to the improvement in healthcare and quality of life, which has increased life expectancy and proportion of elderly people in the population. Falls in older individuals are a public health problem. Devices such as the Portable Emergency Button, the Apple Watch, and the Hip-Hope have been developed to prevent and manage falls. The project presents a prototype of a fall alert system for the elderly that uses an accelerometer to detect falls and send alerts through a GSM device and a mobile application. The prototype includes electronic components such as Raspberry Pi Pico, MPU6050, NEO-6M v2, and SIM800L v2. To characterize falls, four distinct positions are established: `Standing', `Point of No Return', `Impact', and `Fall'. A mobile application were developed in Android Studio that allows users to receive alerts via SMS messages and securely store them in Firebase. The prototype integrates fall detection, geolocation, and alert sending through a Raspberry Pi Pico, and tests were conducted to evaluate its performance.