2017 IEEE/ACM Second International Conference on Internet-of-Things Design and Implementation
Demo Abstract: RIO-40C - A Low-Cost Wearable Sunlight
Exposure Monitor for Skincare
Daniel de Godoy
Columbia University Columbia University
dd2697@columbia.edu jj2860@columbia.edu
ABSTRACT
During summer season, or all year long in tropical regions, the
intense sunlight can be an invitingly trap for your health. While
outdoor activities are usually more enjoyable under a bright sun,
it can hide a silent and deadly villain. Unlike extreme heat or
dehydration, the effects of excessive UV exposure is not immedi-
ately perceived by your body. Nevertheless it has long-term and
extremely dangerous consequences, such as skin cancer. In this
demonstration we present RIO-40C, a smart sunburn monitor. RIO-
40C is a low-cost, wearable, IoT solution that provides personalized
UV monitoring. It is aimed to aware the user about possible treats
and help him plan his schedule to avoid health issues. It also pro-
vides a behavior database to guide decision makers to develop UV
aware urban infrastructure.
CCS CONCEPTS
•Hardware →Sensor devices and platforms;
KEYWORDS
Embedded System, Wearable, Skincare, UV Exposure
ACM Reference format:
Daniel de Godoy, Ji Jia, and Xiaofan Jiang. 2017. Demo Abstract: RIO-
40C - A Low-Cost Wearable Sunlight Exposure Monitor for Skincare. In
Proceedings of The 2nd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Internet-of-
Things Design and Implementation, Pittsburgh, PA USA, April 2017 (IoTDI
2017), 2 pages.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3054977.3057319
1 INTRODUCTION
Sunburns has been a known issue for the summer seasons, and is
usually address by massive behaviour propaganda in areas that it
can be considered a public safety concern [6]. Unfortunately most
of these recommendations are either very generic (e.g. constantly
wear hats and sunglasses), or not very appealing to the users that
are trying to enjoy the sunlight (e.g. avoid going to beach from
10am to 2pm). But the reality is that unsupervised UV exposure can
lead to risky long-term and short-term consequences. A careless
day in the beach can cause serious sunburn and ruin the entire
plans of vacation, or worse, repetitive excessive UV exposure can
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IoTDI 2017, Pittsburgh, PA USA
© 2017 ACM. 978-1-4503-4966-6/17/04. . . $15.00
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3054977.3057319
Ji Jia Xiaofan Jiang
Columbia University
jiang@ee.columbia.edu
lead to skin cancer [5]. Without the proper way to monitor the
sunlight exposure, the user can only use it’s own judgement to
avoid such dangers while enjoying the outdoors.
There are several ways the user can try to get more informa-
tion about it’s current UV exposure, such as historical database or
interactive UV index maps [3]. However these sources present a
very generic information about a large area, it does not accurately
specifies the UV index of your location but the UV index of the
city you are in. Portable UV sensors are also available in the litera-
ture [2], but most of them display the current UV index and do not
concern with the history of exposure. RIO-40C continuously tracks
the UV exposure and calculates the more essential information to
the user: it’s current safety status; how much of sunlight he has
being exposed to, and how much until it becomes dangerous; and
how long he can safely stay were he is.
RIO-40C also tries to present behavioural solutions to the sun-
burns. On the user level, the goal of the system is not to provide
alerts and keep the him from enjoying it’s vacation or outdoors ac-
tivities, but to help shaping his schedule to make it possible to take
the most advantage of his time. In that sense, RIO-40C provides a
list of UV protected attraction based on the current location of the
user.
On the administrator level, RIO-40C stores a database of infor-
mation about it’s users’ UV exposure. It is of the interest of the
administrator (e.g. the Town hall, insurance provider, or tourism
agency) that the users stay under safe limits of UV exposure, and the
data collected by the system can guide them to make UV aware deci-
sion (e.g. removing long lines from unprotected areas, or providing
discount to users with good practices, or rearrange the activities
plan).
Even tough the demonstration described here focus on excessive
UV exposure, the same system can be deployed to control the
underexposure to UV radiation. Sunlight is powerful source of
vitamin D, and the lack of such is linked to serious deceases like
multiple sclerosis [7] [1].
Figure 1: RIO-40C app and tag, and hat with tag.
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2 SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION
The system consists of two main parts: a small sensor tag; and a
smartphone App. The embedded hardware inside the sensor tag
is responsible for collecting the readings from several sensors and
continuously broadcasting their value over BLE to the smartphone.
The App is designed to identify the tag and interpret the data. It
also explores the more advanced resources of the smartphone to
add more relevance to the sensor readings and provide the user
with accurate information regarding his UV exposure in a friendly
interface.
2.1 Embedded Hardware
Inside the 1.2x1.5 inches tag a smart BLE module, the nordic nRF51,
is connected to four sensors: a temperature sensor, a humidity
sensor, a light sensor, and a UV sensor. Every 5 seconds the smart
BLE module broadcasts the data from the sensors and it’s MAC
address via GAP profile.
Figure 2: RIO-40C tag breakdown.
The overall power consumption of the sensor tag is under 1.2mW,
which can sustain a lifetime of approximately 3 months using the
3V coin cell battery that is also mounted inside the tag. The total
cost of the major electronic components of the system is under $12.
2.2 Smartphone App
The RIO-40C app has four primary tasks: identify the user tag;
interpret the tag’s data; provide a friendly user interface; and send
the relevant information to the database.
For the tag identification a QR at the back of each RIO-40C tag
with it’s unique MAC address is used.
Once the sensors data is acquired by the smartphone, more
complex and meaningful operation can be performed. The user is
able to select within a six color pallet the one closest to his skin
color. For each of the skin pigmentation the App uses a model to
estimate the appropriate daily UV energy that should be absorbed
by the user [4]. And, using the log of all previous reading, it to
creates a ”progress bar” of the UV energy that the user was exposed
to. While the raw sensor readings are display on the app, the main
purpose of the interface, shown on Figure 3.a, is to provide high-
level information that can be understood by any user. The main
idea is to clearly communicate to user answers like: Am I in danger?
How much of my UV exposure quota I have used? How long under
the current UV conditions can I safely stay?
RIO-40C App not only provides alerts, but also tries to actively
protect the user indicating a list of UV protected attractions that
are near him, as shown on Figure 3.b. This list is generated in
three ways: manual data entry by the database administrator; using
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Daniel de Godoy, Ji Jia, and Xiaofan Jiang
the sensor reading and location of the user; or by request of the
establishment owner.
Figure 3: Screen shot of RIO-40C App. a) Main screen. b)
Protected attractions near the user.
Finally the RIO-40C, with the permission of the user, anony-
mously syncs the all the relevant data to the database. This data
can be analysed to assist in decision making process of entities like
town hall or hotels investments.
3 DEMONSTRATION DESCRIPTION
On this demonstration we will bring the RIO-40C tags for free
appreciation of the crowd. Phones will be provided with the RIO-
40C App pre-installed, but we will also make the App available for
download in case anyone is interested on trying it with their own
phones.
We will simulate situation where the system would provide
feedback to user. We will shine an UV light at the sensor and show
the instantaneous and cumulative exposure, and the brake-down
point where the system will advise the user to protect himself from
UV radiation.
We will also show an example of the database collected by the
system. Highlighting the interesting data points where the deploy-
ment of the system provided valuable information regarding the
user behaviour.
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