2015 International Conference on Advanced Computing and Communications
PiCam: IoT based Wireless Alert System for
Deaf and Hard of Hearing
Pushpanjali Kumari Pratibha Goel
M. Tech (MPC) M. Tech(MPC)
CSE Dept., IGDTUW CSE Dept., IGDTUW
Kashmere Gate, Delhi Kashmere Gate, Delhi
20pushp@gmail.com pratibha_goel2006@gmail.com
Abstract--- Deaf and people with hearing impairment
face everyday challenges in identifying the occurrence
of household sounds like door bell, child crying or
phone ringing. The objective of this paper is to design
and implement a low cost stand-alone device for deaf
people to notify doorbell ringing who live alone in their
house. The system is based on Raspberry pi which
includes camera, vibrator, wireless GSM and bluetooth.
When the visitor presses the doorbell, captured image is
transferred to the wearable device which helps to know
the right person at the door or intruder. After
transferring image, wearable device vibrates to notify.
Also, the message is sent to the owner through GSM.
Visitor’s image along with the date and time is sent to
the server for retrieving information later. The system
is reliable, effective, and easy to use and also enhances
the security of the user.
Keywords--- Alert System, Raspberry Pi Camera, Server,
Bluetooth, Global System for Mobile Communication
(GSM), Vibrator, TFT.
I. INTRODUCTION
Hearing loss presents many everyday challenges.
Communication may be the biggest challenge of all-
getting and giving information, exchanging ideas,
sharing feelings-whether in one-to-one contact or in
groups. Sometimes there are small disruptions of
daily life that result from reduced hearing. For
example, how do you know when there is someone at
the door? Or the phone is ringing? Or the baby is
crying? With the present set of concept of hearing
disability, the Census of India, 2001 counted
1,261,722 people in whom hearing disability existed
(Males 53.4% and Females 46.59%) [1].Many
devices and systems are available to help deaf and
hard of hearing people improve communication,
adapt to their environment, and function in society
more effectively. Alert systems, or simply signalers,
are designed to help notify different events, such as
the phone ringing, the doorbell, a baby's cry, motion,
weather alerts, or smoke alarms. It usually
happensthat the deaf people are unaware of the
visitor to the home and also the old age people have
978-1-4673-9777-3/16 $31.00 © 2016 IEEE 39
DOI 10.1109/ADCOM.2015.14
Dr. S. R. N. Reddy
Associate Professor
CSE Dept., IGDTUW
Kashmere Gate, Delhi
rammallik@yahoo.com
difficulties in walking or moving to go and see who
is at the door. So it would be of great help for those
people if they have alert about the visitor to home
and can know who is at the door?.
This paper describes the study of various systems
and technologies available for deaf and old age
people. The proposed system here is designed to alert
the hearing impaired and old age people about the
visitor. The system consists of two modules- a
transmitter and a receiver. The transmitter is the
device installed at the door. The transmitter consists
of Raspberry Pi, RPi camera, switch or doorbell,
GSM, and Bluetooth. The receiver is the wearable
device which includes Raspberry Pi, Bluetooth, LCD
or screen to display the image and message and
vibrator to alert. Visitor’s image along with date and
time will be sent to the server for retrieving
information later. The major advantage of the system
is that it reduces the visitor’s waiting time and can
also help in the security of the deaf/elderly.
The paper is structured as follows. In section II the
review of various papers or systems and technologies
is done that are especially for deaf and elderly. In
section III proposed work is described. In section IV
describes the system implementation in detail and
interfacing of hardware components is shown.
Finally, the results, conclusion and future work
discussed.
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
A robot using dog–inspired visual communicational
signals to communicate intention is designed by K. L.
Koay et al.[2]. Robot was able to lead participants to
the microwave door and front door sound source.
Head movements and gaze directions were important
for communicating the robot’s intention using visual
communication signals. Gopinath Shanmuga
Sundaram[3] attempted to build a low cost stand-
alone device which transmits data using the
Raspberry Pi with Bluetooth and has a resistive touch
screen display providing a user interface. Error
handling techniques were used to catch the
exceptions and were able to retransmit till the
acknowledgement was received. Chao-Huang Wei
and Shin-An Chen[4] employed a novel power line
communication chip to develop a networked digital
video door phone system to replace the conventional
ones. Door Phone is used to identify visitor or for
simple voice interlocution. They transfer audio visual
information and enhance the entrance guarding
functions additionally. Mahdi Safaa A. et
al.[5]designed the handheld device for obstacle
detection using ultrasonic sensor and generate voice
alert for blind and vibration alert for deaf person by
keeping his finger on the button at the top of the
device. The device is suitable and easy for blind &
deaf with 40-150cm range and can be used in three
dimensions. Huiping Huang, et al.[6] presented a
solution for establishing a low power consumption
remote home security alarm system developed by
applying WSN and GSM technology is presented. It
can detect the theft, leaking of raw gas and fire, and
send alarm message remotely. The advantages of
system is reliability, easy usage, complement
wireless, low power consumption and the system
also has practical value in other fields. The design
and implementation of a low cost, low power
consumption, and GSM/GPRS based wireless home
security system is presented by Yanbo Zhao and
Zhaohui Ye[7].The system include three kinds of
wireless security sensor nodes that are door security
nodes, infrared security nodes and fire alarm nodes
with easy installing nodes. It has a friendly user
interface including a LCD and a capacitive sensor
keyboard. Jayashri Bangali1 and Arvind
Shaligram[8] suggest two methods for home security
system. The first system uses web camera. Whenever
there is a motion in front of the camera, it gives
security alert in terms of sound and a mail is
delivered to the owner. The second method sends
SMS which uses GSMGPS Module (sim548c) and
Atmega644p microcontroller, sensors, relays and
buzzers. The web camera based security system is
very easy, user friendly and software has many
features. Chun-Liang Hsu et al.[9]developed DIY
home-security so as to cost down the expenditure as
well as to improve the mechanism of traditional ones
with brand-new techniques co-constructed with
phone-net, speech-function, and Bluetooth modules
that was not only easy to accomplish the security
work of people’s houses, but also save much money
.It is easily used for intelligent system such as digital-
house in the future. Ming Xu et al.[16] developed a
WSN system to construct smart home systems. A
monitoring system is built by taking advantage of the
GPRS network and Zigbee technology to support
multi-hop communications.
III. PROPOSED WORK
This paper proposes a low cost, reliable and efficient
system to alert the deaf or hearing impaired person
consisting of two modules- a transmitter installed at
the door and another is the receiver, a wearable
device.When the visitor presses the doorbell, RPi
Camera captures the image and transfers it to the
wearable device through bluetooth. After sending the
image, the GSM Modem sends a message that there
is a visitor at the door to the owner. The database is
also created which is sent to the server.Figure1 shows
the architectural diagram of the system.
Fig.1. Architectural Diagram
When the image is received on the wearable device
through bluetooth, the vibrator vibrates to alert that
there is a visitor at the door. The image of the visitor
is displayed on the device along with a message on
the LCD/ Screen. The image along with the date and
time is sent to the server for later retrieval.
The system basically consists of:
A. Raspberry Pi Board Model B
The Raspberry Pi[10] is a credit card-sized single-
board computer developed in the UK by
the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The Raspberry Pi has a
Broadcom BCM2835 system on a chip (SOC), which
includes an ARM1176JZF-S 700 MHz processor,
Video Core IV GPU, and was originally shipped with
256 megabytes of RAM, later upgraded (Model B &
Model B+) to 512 MB.
B. Bluetooth HC-05

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 HC-05 module [11] is an easy to use Bluetooth SPP in handheld applications powered by either dual cell
(Serial Port Protocol) module, designed for alkaline primary / nickel based rechargeable batteries,
transparent wireless serial connection setup. Serial or single cell lithium primary / lithium rechargeable
port Bluetooth module is fully qualified Bluetooth batteries.
V2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) 3Mbps Modulation IV. IMPLEMENTATION
with complete 2.4GHz radio transceiver and The Raspberry Pi board is used to implement the
baseband. It uses CSR Blue core 04-External single system. Raspbian OS image is burnt in 8GB SD card
chip Bluetooth system with CMOS technology and to boot RPi. Figure2 describes the flow of data.The
with AFH (Adaptive Frequency Hopping Feature). It operating system wheezy Raspbian image is
has the footprint as small as 12.7mmx27mm. Hope it downloaded from the website
will simplify your overall design/development cycle. raspberry.org/downloads.

C. SIMCOM SIM 900A GSM Module

GSM/GPRS[12] Modem-RS232 is built with Dual
Band GSM/GPRS engine- SIM900A, works on
frequencies 900/ 1800MHz. The Modem is coming
with RS232 interface, which allows you connect PC
as well as microcontroller with RS232 Chip
(MAX232). The baud rate is configurable from 9600-
115200 through AT command. The GSM/GPRS
Modem is having internal TCP/IP stack to enable you
to connect with internet via GPRS. It is suitable for
SMS, Voice as well as DATA transfer application in
M2M interface. The on board Regulated Power
supply allows you to connect wide range unregulated
power supply. Using this modem, you can make
audio calls, SMS, Read SMS; attend the incoming
calls and internet etc. through simple AT commands.

D. LCD (16 X 2)
x 5X8 dots with cursor
x 16 characters* 2 lines display[13]
x 4-bit or 8-bit MPU interfaces
x Built-in controller (ST7066 or equivalent)
x Display mode and backlight variations
x ROHS compliant
E. RPi Camera Module
The Raspberry Pi Camera [14] Board features a 5MP
(2592×1944 pixels) Omnivision 5647 sensor in a
fixed focus module. The module attaches to
Raspberry Pi, by way of a 15 Pin Ribbon Cable, to
the dedicated 15-pin MIPI Camera Serial
Interface (CSI), which was designed especially for
interfacing to cameras. The CSI bus is capable of
extremely high data rates, and it exclusively carries
pixel data to the BCM2835 processor.
F. Vibration Motor
The Precision Micro drives 304-002 Pico Vibe
4mm vibrating motors[15] is based on a coreless
motor design, with precious metal commutation
circuitry and a toroidal neodymium magnet. Rated at
3V nominal, they are designed for alerting functions
Fig.2. Flow chart
Now, writing the image to the SD card as following
x Insert the SD card into SD card slot of
PC/laptop.
x Extract the executable from the zip file of
downloaded image win32diskimager and run the
win32diskimager utility.
x Select the image file extracted above.
x Select the drive letter of SD card in the device
box. Be careful to select drive.
x Click on write and wait for write to complete.
Exit the imager and eject the SD card.
Raspberry Pi is connected with the display via HDMI
and for input, connected with the keyboard and
mouse. Figure 3 and 4 shows the interfacing of the
components on the door system and wearable device
respectively.

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 Fig.3. Thedoor system
Fig.6. Image received on wearable device
In door system, the camera is plugged directly into
When the visitor presses the doorbell, RPi Camera
the CSI connector on raspberry pi board. Switch is
captures the image and transfers it to the wearable
connected with the GPIO pin of raspberry pi. The
device through bluetooth. After receiving the image
transmitter of bluetooth is connected with the
on wearable device, the device vibrates to alert the
receiver of raspberry pi and vice versa to transfer the
person about the visitor’s arrival and also displays the
visitor’s image on wearable device.
message on screen. The message is also sent to the
owner about the visitor’s arrival.

Fig.4. The wearable device

In wearable device, the LCD is connected with the

raspberry pi to display the message. The vibrator is
connected with the GPIO pin of raspberry pi as
output. The transmitter of bluetooth is connected with
the receiver of pi and vice versa to receive the image
through bluetooth.

Fig.5. Image transfer on door system Fig.7. Image stored on server

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 The graph shown in fig.8 is showing that as the level
of brightness changes, there is variation in image
size. The brightness level has been categorized into
three; bright, normal and dark. In bright light, the
captured image size is highest. In normal light, the
image size is less compared to the image size in
bright light. The captured image size is very less in
dark.

Fig.8. Message received on owner phone

V. PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS AND

TESTING
The prototype of system is implemented and tested to
send an alert message of the visitor’s arrival along
with the image of the visitor transferred serially via
bluetooth. All components on the door system and Fig.10. Image Size vs brightness level
wearable device are interfaced properly. The image is
transferred on wearable device through bluetooth on VI. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS
time.
Various existing alert systems and technologies have
The performance of the implemented system has been reviewed. This paper describes implementation
been analysed on the basis of QoS parameters such as of a low cost IOT based alert system for deaf and
image transfer rate and image brightness level. hearing impaired people for their safety purposes.
A. Visitor’s image transfer rate: The message is also received on user’s phone through
GSM and also the data is updated on the server.
The graph shown in fig.7 depicts that as the size of
The future work includes retrieving the captured
the captured image increases, the image transfer time
image stored on server and child crying detector for
from the door system to the wearable device also
the Deaf people.
increases.

REFERENCES
[1] http://ihcrp.georgetown.edu/agingsociety/pd
fs/hearing.pdf
[2] K. L. Koay, G. Lakatos, D.S.,“Hey! There is
someone at your door. A Hearing Robot
using Visual Communication Signals of
Hearing Dogs to Communicate Intent”, 978-
1-4673-5863-7/13, 2013 IEEE.
[3] Gopinath Shanmuga Sundaram,
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Krishna Alla, Gautham Ravi Prakash, Shiva
Chaitanya Vishwakarma Chandracha,
Sindhu Boppana and James M.Conrad.
Fig.9. Image Size vs Image transfer time “Bluetooth Communication using a Touch
B. Impact of brightness level on captured image: screen Interface with the Raspberry Pi”,
978-1-4799-0053-4/13, 2013 IEEE.

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[4] Chao-Huang Wei and Shin-An Chen. Network for Smart Homes”, 2010 Symposia
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