Base station concepts of an automatic fluid intake monitoring system

This contribution presents different concepts for base stations complementing a fluid intake monitoring system. The motivation behind this research is the high amount of dehydration diagnoses in hospitals. Affected patients are almost exclusively elderly people. Therefore a monitoring system is needed that is able to detect insufficient fluid intake, especially designed for this demographic group. The foundation of this system is based on smart sensor cups which are able to deduce fluid intake by detecting the filling level. This paper focuses on complementary devices for these cups which are necessary in order to build an exhaustive monitoring system. Depending on the intended scenario, the primary functions are charging the sensor cups and receiving and displaying data. This data is either displayed for an immediate feedback or subsequently transferred to a central server for storage in a database or further processing. This contribution presents three different concepts: a simple multi charging station for up to four cups simultaneously, a stand-alone base station able to charge and display informations gathered by one sensor cup and a network-compatible base station for several cups. The system mentioned last is also able to transfer their data via Ethernet to a server. The interface between sensor cup and system as well as their intended use are presented in detail for each concept. The evaluation concentrates on the reliability of a system build on scenarios around the network-compatible base station.