Smart home for elderly living using Wireless Sensor Networks and an Android application

A Smart Home (SH) is a house or an apartment equipped with advanced automation technologies to provide the occupants with intelligent monitoring and actionable information that can be situation specific. It allows for improvements in the way we live or work, and for improved energy efficiencies. The smart home is especially relevant for the elderly because the intelligent sensing systems would allow for remote monitoring and possibly control of health and environmental parameters according to their health status and living needs. The burgeoning elderly population and rising costs of elderly healthcare and home needs have led to a rapid evolution of the elderly smart living environment. However, the lack of proper eldercare smart home technologies has inspired us to develop Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) based smart home for the elderly using the Android platform. We have proposed a model for the elderly using Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) implemented as an Android application. Our smart home research potentially allows the elderly to continue to live in their own homes while being monitored non-invasively, seamlessly and economically according to their healthcare needs and status.