ThermaSENSE App

ThermaSENSE is a company that utilizes AccuTemp, a patent-pending technology that enables non-invasive, real-time, internal temperature measurement of almost any object. This technology has applications in industries such as medical, agricultural, and industrial processes. These devices can be used in a wide variety of locations, not all of which will be easy to physically access. To make use of this technology, a pipeline that remotely captures, structures, and visualizes this data is necessary.

The proposed system is an app-to-cloud pipeline that takes the Bluetooth data from ThermaSENSE devices into an iOS app, which processes and visualizes the data while storing it in Firebase where it can be associated with user accounts. This pipeline will be broken down into 3 major parts, those being the circuit board (representing the ThermaSENSE device), the iOS app, and the cloud storage. The circuit board processes sensor data in a local offline buffer and then transmits the data to the iOS app once a connection is established. The app has the ability to sign-up/log-in users, connect to ThermaSENSE devices, process and visualize sensor data, and push/pull sensor data from the cloud account associated with the user. We store user accounts and their sensor data with Firebase, which allows the retrieval of the sensor data while also providing a structure about how that data will be stored.

This project utilizes previous work given by our contact person, Ali Roghani, which includes Arduino code to send Bluetooth data, as well as an Adafruit Feather nRF52840 Express board. Arduino is an open-source electronics platform that we use to program the software for the device. Adafruit is a company that manufactures programmable boards, and for this project, we will be using an Adafruit Feather nRF52840 Express board. This provides the foundation for sending Bluetooth data and how the readings will be formatted for parsing. On the board, we implemented features such as an offline buffer and flexible data formatting. We created a ThermaSENSE iOS app that will capture the sensor data from the device and visualize the live readings. The app allows users to create an account that will be synced with Firebase to store sensor data. Using the user accounts, we can pull historical data into the app and visualize longer periods.

Our final deliverables are the Arduino code for an Adafruit Feather nRF52840 Sense board, the ThermaSENSE iOS app, an admin Firebase cloud account, documentation for users and developers, and a report. Over-the-air board updates were not supported by Adafruit at the time of this project, but research and possible implementations were documented for future reference. Since this project has documentation for the board code, app code, and cloud admin structure, our client can maintain and improve this project in the future.