Real-time Environmental Control System for Disability Access under Node-MCU Platform

Abstract

An Environmental Control Unit (ECU) is an electronic device that helps a person to perform daily tasks and control the surrounding environment. Hand gesture can be employed to perform this purpose via special wearable gloves. In this paper, we propose a low-cost Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) method using Node MCU platform. Finger and palm movement is captured based on the output of a flex and accelerometer sensors. The output voltage of the flex sensor represents the degree of a finger's bending while the output of the accelerometer determines the 3-axis of palm movement in order to operate up to three devices. This glove is connected to an Internet-of-Thing (IoT) platform that supports wireless communication through a web server in order to make the ECU wire-free and hence increase the portability of the system. Comparisons with the related work confirm that the proposed system is simple, accurate and easy to implement.