PROJECT REPORT

SMART BLIND STICK

CSE3009 - Internet of Things

J Component

By:
16BCE2147 - Akshay Gugale
16BCE0400 - Ayush Maria
16BCE0721 – Prakhar Lohiya

Submitted to Prof. Parveen Sultana, SCOPE

Slot: F1

School of Computer Science and Engineering

Fall Semester 2018 – 2019

14th November, 2018

 INDEX
1. Abstract

2. Literature Survey

3. Design

4. Components

5. Implementation

6. Conclusion

7. References
 Abstract

Visually impaired persons have difficulty to interact and feel their environment.
They have little contact with surrounding. Physical movement is a challenge for visually
impaired persons, because it can become tricky to distinguish where he is, and how to
get where he wants to go from one place to another.

The reason behind selecting this topic is to create a smart device that will assist
blind people for their day to day commute. The stick will use multiple IoT devices
connected to the network with the help of which a person will be able to book a cab just
by pressing a button. The location of the person will be tracked and also can be shared
to their family members. A lot more features can be added to the stick like vibration
during walks to avoid obstacles, audio output that can be used for navigate streets. The
stick will also have a panic button that can be used in case of emergency. The cabs
booked will via 3rd party cab services various smart devices and APIs will be used to
carry out the tasks.
 Literature Survey
1. The smart stick comes as a proposed solution to enable visually impaired people to find
difficulties in detecting obstacles and dangers in front of them during walking and to identify
the world around. The system is designed to act like an artificial vision and alarm unit The
system consists of five sensors: ultrasonic sensor, IR sensor, water sensor, fire sensor, and light
(LDR) sensor, microcontroller (Arduino Uno R3) to receive the sensor signals and process them
to short pulses to the Arduino pins where buzzers, vibrator and voice alarms are connected. GPS
navigation in the Mobile can be used to guide the blind for new places and unfamiliar places.
The blind man uses an earphone to listen to the navigation directions that are coming from the
GPS and buzzer alarm to warn by sound. We seek in our project to provide a smart stick
affordable and suitable for most blind people, and also it is light in weight. It can be made
available to all segments of the society and their families who need them.
2. This Smart stick will have an Ultrasonic sensor to sense distance from any obstacle, LDR to
sense lighting conditions and a RF remote using which the blind man could remotely locate his
stick. All the feedbacks will be given to the blind man through a Buzzer.
3. Of course you can use a vibrator motor in place of Buzzer and advance a lot more using your
creativity.
4. Blind people need some aid to feel safe while moving. Smart stick comes as a proposed
solution to improve the mobility of both blind and visually impaired people. Stick solution use
different technologies like ultrasonic, infrared and laser but they still have drawbacks. In this
paper we propose, light weight, cheap, user friendly, fast response and low power
consumption, smart stick based on infrared technology. A pair of infrared sensors can detect
stair-cases and other obstacles presence in the user path, within a range of two meters. The
experimental results achieve good accuracy and the stick is able to detect all of obstacles.
5. Some studies hypothesize that a smart cane that alerts visually-impaired people over obstacles
in front could help them in walking with less accident. The aim of the paper is to address the
development work of a cane that could communicate with the users through voice alert and
vibration, which is named Smart Cane. The development work involves coding and physical
installation. A series of tests have been carried out on the smart cane and the results are
discussed. This study found that the Smart Cane functions well as intended, in alerting users
about the obstacles in front. Keywords: Assistive technology
 Design

Fig: ESP8266 Pin out

Fig: Arduino Uno Pin out

Fig: ESP8266 connection with Arduino Uno via the RX, TX pins

Fig: HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor connected to the Arduino Uno

 COMPONENTS

USB Cable

Breadboard Resistors

Connector Wires Arduino Board

 Switch Wifi Module

Ultrasonic Sensor
 IMPLEMENTATION

The implementation was done using the following components:

Hardware used:
- Arduino uno
- ESP8266 – WiFi module
- HC-SR04 – Ultrasonic sensor
- Neo 6m – GPS module
- Jumper wires

Software used:
- Arduino IDE
- Thinkspeak platform

For WiFi connection:

#include <ESP8266WiFi.h>

void setup()
{
Serial.begin(115200);
Serial.println();

WiFi.begin("SSID", "password");

Serial.print("Connecting");
while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED)
{
delay(500);
Serial.print(".");
}
Serial.println();

Serial.print("Connected, IP address: ");

Serial.println(WiFi.localIP());
}

void loop() {}

For WiFi connection and API request:

#include <ESP8266WiFi.h>
#include <ESP8266HTTPClient.h>
#include <SoftwareSerial.h>
SoftwareSerial esp(2, 3);
long duration ;
int distance;

const char* ssid = "Network";

const char* password = "nahipata";

void setup()
{
Serial.begin(115200);
Serial.println();

WiFi.begin("Network", "nahipata");

Serial.print("Connecting");
while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED)
{
delay(500);
Serial.print(".");
}
Serial.println();

Serial.print("Connected, IP address: ");

Serial.println(WiFi.localIP());
}

void loop() {
Serial.println();
Serial.print(" looping");

if (WiFi.status() == WL_CONNECTED) { //Check WiFi connection

status
Serial.print("INSIDE HTTP IF");
HTTPClient http; //Declare an object of class HTTPClient
String baseurl =
"http://api.thingspeak.com/update?api_key=RV4Y48GG6UQYDZQP&fiel
d1=";
int data = getSensorData();
String url = baseurl + data;
http.begin(url); //Specify request destination
int httpCode = http.GET();
//Send the request
Serial.print(" . HTTP CODE --- ");
Serial.print(httpCode);

if (httpCode > 0) { //Check the returning code

Serial.print(" . HTTP CODE --- ");
Serial.print(httpCode);
String payload = http.getString(); //Get the request
response payload
 Serial.println(payload); //Print the
response payload

http.end(); //Close connection

}
else {
Serial.println("wifi not connected");
}

delay(30000); //Send a request every 30 seconds

int getSensorData(){
return random(1000); // Replace with
}

For getting data from ultrasonic sensor:

const int pingPin = 7; // Trigger Pin of Ultrasonic Sensor

const int echoPin = 6; // Echo Pin of Ultrasonic Sensor

void setup() {
Serial.begin(115200); // Starting Serial Terminal
Serial.println("setup done");
}

void loop() {
Serial.println("looping...");
long duration, inches, cm;
pinMode(pingPin, OUTPUT);
digitalWrite(pingPin, LOW);
delayMicroseconds(2);
digitalWrite(pingPin, HIGH);
delayMicroseconds(10);
digitalWrite(pingPin, LOW);
pinMode(echoPin, INPUT);
duration = pulseIn(echoPin, HIGH);
inches = microsecondsToInches(duration);
cm = microsecondsToCentimeters(duration);
Serial.print(inches);
Serial.print("in, ");
Serial.print(cm);
Serial.print("cm");
Serial.println();
 delay(100);
}

long microsecondsToInches(long microseconds) {

return microseconds / 74 / 2;
}

long microsecondsToCentimeters(long microseconds) {

return microseconds / 29 / 2;
}

The Circuit Connection:

 CONCLUSION

Hence the blind stick, though a common idea was worked on and improvised to suit the
needs of the people today. In order to make the elderly people comfortable our version
of the blind stick has many improvised ideologies. If implemented properly it will
definitely help people and hence improve their comfort zone.

Our version of the blind stick can be revolutionized, by partnerships with taxicab
companies like Uber and Ola. The blind stick is something that can constantly improve
over time and hence has a great scope in the future. Additional features can be added
over time that will make the blind stick quite easy to handle. For example voice
recognition can be added to make the smart stick more user friendly. Fingerprint
sensors can also be added to recognize the user.
 REFERENCES

1. Nada, Ayat & Mashali, Samia & Fakhr, Mahmoud & Seddik, Ahmed. (2015). Effective Fast
Response Smart Stick for Blind People. 10.15224/978-1-63248-043-9-29.

2. Mahmud, N & Saha, R.K. & Zafar, R.B. & Bhuian, M.B.H. & Sarwar, Syed. (2014). Vibration
and voice operated navigation system for visually impaired person. 2014 International
Conference on Informatics, Electronics and Vision, ICIEV 2014. 1-5.
10.1109/ICIEV.2014.6850740.

3. Kumar, A & Patra, Rusha & Mahadevappa, Manjunatha & Mukhopadhyay, J & Majumdar,
Arun. (2011). An electronic travel aid for navigation of visually impaired persons. 2011 3rd
International Conference on Communication Systems and Networks, COMSNETS 2011. 1 - 5.
10.1109/COMSNETS.2011.5716517.

4. du Buf, J & Barroso, Joao & Rodrigues, Joao & Paredes, Hugo & Farrajota, M & Fernandes,
Hugo & José, João & Teixeira, V & Saleiro, Mário. (2011). The SmartVision Navigation
Prototype for Blind Users. International Journal of Digital Content Technology and its
Applications. 12. 351-361. 10.4156/jdcta.vol5.issue5.39.

5. Bouhamed, Sonda & Khanfir, Imene & Sellami, Dorra. (2013). New electronic white cane for
stair case detection and recognition using ultrasonic sensor. International Journal of Advanced
Computer Science and Applications. 4. 10.14569/IJACSA.2013.040633.