I would first like to intro myself, my name is Brent and I have never even seen an Arduino. I stumbled upon this site while doing some research for a project I am doing for my 6 yr old daughter. I will get right to it. Here is a brief history of my daughter, she suffered a traumatic brain injury at the age of 2; she has very low quality of life. She has no "purposeful" movement at all except right arm/hand "even that is very limited" , she is tube feed, wheelchair bound, and suffers from low grade temp. "normal body temp is 85-88", she has also had many surgeries on hips, brain etc. She recently had hip surgery which is what brought me to this site. My idea/need is, I would like to constantly monitor body temp, would like to have a sensor on the seat of her wheelchair that could let me know if she needs to be changed. This is not me being lazy but for 2 reasons 1. she has a problem where she wont wet her diaper for say 10-18 hrs and then will soak everything, so if I can catch it right away I can take appropriate action 2. she is in so much pain when she is moved to check for wet diaper "which could be greatly reduced if known she hadn't gone". I would also like to make some sort of button she can touch and lights will blink "she loves looking at lights and TV. This will also work as a therapy to stretch her only moveable limb "right arm". This would be the main parts of the project but once I can better understand what I can and cannot do with the Arduino I have a ton more ideas both medically and her general wellbeing. Another quick thing , I would like to have the heat pad turn on when her temp is below say 90 and turn off when it reaches approx. 96. I purchased the UNO-MEGA-NANO-Super-Starter-Kit-for-Arduino-Beginner-STEM-Sensor-Motor-US-Seller. I tried doing research for what I would need but after hours of reading and youtube videos I bought the most expensive kit I could find on ebay in hopes to have everything "at least most things" that I will need to accomplish this project. I would appreciate any advice/ideas. Also I am in preK as far as computers are concerned but I will research anything and everything in order to make this work. Thank you all in advance!!!
Welcome to the forum.
Although the Arduino is a great platform, it is not designed for medical applications.
However, things you are thinking about are doable.
The first place to start is to try out all the sample sketches which come with the IDE.
You have two things to master, Programming and hardware, lots here will help you with things you get stumped with.
Some places to look for tutorials are:
https://learn.adafruit.com/category/learn-arduino
https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/
Pressure sensors might be something you might want to put on your things to learn list.
What is your background?
Brent, I'm very sorry to hear about your daughter's situation. I feel for her.
Larry's advice is good - get stuck into as many examples as possible and get a 'feel' for both the software and hardware side of things. Just take one step at a time.
Good luck with it all, and give us a shout if you get stuck with anything.
There are always plenty of knowledgeable people here who are happy to help. 
Thank you all for the replies and welcoming me to the forum. Larry thank you for the links, my background consist of carpentry, machining "i have a lathe and mill", degree in business, and I do a lot of tinkering with engines, nitro R/C cars, etc. I have done a bit of everything but the one thing I have always been interested in is electronics but have never gone in depth. I plan on going toschool for mechanical engineering very shortly. Oldsteve thank you for the advice, I do feel it is important to go one step at a time as I already have information overload. It is hard to figure out what step 1 is, as there is so much information to comb through. Delta_G the heating pad is normally on the back of the seat so when she is in the chair it heats from her back. For the temp sensor my thought was to put the sensor in those round sticky things "drawing a blank on proper name" that are used for heart monitoring etc. I would then put it on her side toward arm pit for example but would have to research the best placement where it is accurate but not in the way. As far as the diaper the problem we have is when she goes she leaks through no matter what do to the fact she holds it for many hours. She has to sit on this absorbant pad so her chair doesn't get soaked. So my thought was if it could alert me I can change her asap. It is kind of a hard thing to explain as most would think it would be pointless but it would be very helpful mostly due to the pain she is in when I move her to check a few times an hour. I also want to say I completely realize I have a ton to learn and this wont be a quick project, I would be happy to light an LED lol. I just wanted to bounce the idea around with knowledgable people such as ourselves to understand if I can make this a reality.
BTW
A disposable moisture sensor can be easily made with three pieces of cloth and small 30 gauge flexible wire.
-------------------------- Top cloth layer
_________________________________ Wire A 1K resistor _____ GND
-------------------------- Middle cloth layer
_________________________________ Wire B ________________ Arduino input (set to INPUT_PULLUP)
-------------------------- Bottom layer
Sew around the perimeter.
- Safety and comfort is paramount.
- Also design for redundancies.
LarryD, I really like the idea and will purse. So I received my kit yesterday and started to follow along with the course for absolute beginners videos. The one question I have is my breadboard is different from the one he used as well as most that I have seen doing a search. The difference is on the bottom and top of the board he uses has two rows of inputs one could be + other -, mine only has 1 row. With only having the 1 row bottom and top do I just use ea one as a pos or neg? The reason i ask is i was following along to video 7 which u use a push button and when you push it you either get 1's or 0's. When I did it I would get 10101010etc.
Show us a good image of you breadboard.
is different from the one he used
Who is he?
The reason i ask is i was following along to video 7 which . . .
?
Give us a link.
That sounds like you missed out a wire and the input is what is called "floating". Not connected to anything.
Make the top line + and the bottom one ground. You will have to change any wiring to suite this arrangement.
Tutorial 07: digitalRead() and the Serial Port: Arduino Course for Absolute Beginners (ReM) This is for the youtube video. By he I was referring to the gentleman in the video. I am having problems posting a picture but it is a SYB-130 breadboard.
I'm no expert by any means, but some help...
To post the picture of your breadboard, simply google SYB-130 and pick the "images" option in the browser search. You can then pick one of the images that look similar. Once picked, right click and pick the option save image as, and save it as a logical name on your desktop.
If you then want to upload it in an existing post, pick "Reply". This way you will see the option below to add an attachment. If you forget and just start typing in the "Quick reply" at the bottom of the screen, pick "Save Draft", then "OK". This then brings up the options for attaching an image (as long as it's under 1Mb and correct file format as listed). Is it like the one below?
I think you're breadboard looks like the one below. If so, Mike's advice above is good.
As for the 10101010 display, is it "exactly" like that or 11100010110011 at random? If at random, yes probably floating. Looking at the code in your video link), your code is as shown below. Make sure you type it in correctly:
int pushButton = 2;
void setup() {
Serial.begin(9600);
pinMode(pushButton, INPUT);
}
void loop() {
int buttonState = digitalRead(pushButton);
Serial.print(buttonState);
delay(1);
}
If all that's good, a cable might not be connected properly. Connections should be:
- Arduino Gnd to your breadboard ground rail(bottom row)
- Arduino 5V to your breadboard power rail(top row?)
- 10K resistor to to 1st pin of switch
- 1st pin of switch to Arduino pin 2
- 2nd pin of switch to the breadboard power rail
If this still doesn't work, it's probably your 5V in the circuit not connected properly somewhere. Double check you're using the correct Arduino pin numbers - it's easy to mis-judge.
That is the breadboard that i have. Thanks for educating me on the steps to attach picture, as i stated above I am light years behind as far as computers are concerned. Things that seem so easy for others is a process for me, but I am doing my best to educate myself so having things laid out the way you did is much appreciated.
LarryD:
- Safety and comfort is paramount.
- Also design for redundancies.
The redundancy would be 8 hourly checks? So although a system is in place to increase response time, I only assume it is purely for response time to increase the rate of care...not to replace care.
As far as moisture sensor "pad", this is literally the first hit I get on google.co.uk. A sensor for "bed wetting".
Could be of use?