VOICE-CONTROLLED LIGHTING SYSTEM FOR THE ELDERLY AND PERSONS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS

Abstract

With an aging population and the increasing acceptance of community-based care, there is a growing need for electronic assistive technology to support independent living, particularly among the elderly and persons with special needs. The voice-controlled lighting system is a voice recognition system that aims to use the language of English to control the lighting system of a specific room. It presents an automated approach to controlling the lights in a household that could ease the task of using the traditional method of the switch. It therefore uses the voice recognition Google APIs to articulate the voice of the person speaking and effectively come up with the command that would enable it to control the lighting system of the house.

Throughout the project design and Implementation, the use of the Arduino mega programming tool is of much importance while at the same time incorporating the Google Application Program Interfaces (APIs) and libraries in the ultimate design of the software. The connection between the microcontroller and the Android application is established via Bluetooth module, a widespread wireless technology used for sharing data. A very important consideration is the vocabulary template that includes specific words and phonemes.

In the process of design, the creation of a user aspect of the voice recognition system is significant to control the lighting of the house by acting as a switch. The relay board and the optoisolator systems are used to provide the required control of the lighting circuit. Therefore, by using the system, the elderly and disabled people can easily control the lighting system with their voice from the place that they are without the need to maneuver through obstacles in the room.

The objectives of using voice commands to control the lighting system using the relay and employing Bluetooth technology to send and receive commands

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were achieved and proved to be a more convenient and cheap means of switching home lighting systems.

The study recommends that a clear set of libraries be set in the Android application to enable diversification to Arabic, Dazaga, and other local languages. Also, it suggests that Google Cloud Messaging be integrated to control our lighting system from the Internet as well as introduce security-sensitive functionality on the voice application.