2020 IEEE International Conference for Innovation in Technology (INOCON)

Bengaluru, India. Nov 6-8, 2020

Raspberry Pi Based Smart Wearable Device for

Women Safety using GPS and GSM Technology
Dhiraj Sunehra, SMIEEE1, V. Sai Sreshta2, V. Shashank3, B. Uday Kumar Goud4
Department of ECE, JNTUH College of Engineering,
Jagtial, India
1
dhirajsunehra@yahoo.co.in,2vuresaisreshta@gmail.com,3vodelashashank1@gmail.com,4uday.badhagowni.005@gmail.com

Abstract—Security has become a major concern for even during the least connectivity times using radio
women, children and even elders in every walk of their life. identification based cognitive radio, GSM and GPS and
Women are getting assaulted and molested, children are sends a location URL to respective authorities [3]. Otterson
getting kidnapped, elder citizens are also facing many and Dufner described a security system which sends the
problems like robbery, etc. In this paper, a smart security location of the victim using GPS and GSM and also the
solution called smart wearable device system is implemented captured image of the victim and also the assault using a
using the Raspberry Pi3 for enhancing the safety and security camera fixed in the system to the respected people [4].
of women/children. It works as an alert as well as a security Chitrakara et al developed a special gadget especially for
system. It provides a buzzer alert alert to the people who are girls and women who face problems like domestic violence,
nearby to the user (wearing the smart device). The system uses sexual assaults etc., which makes the women win against the
Global Positioning System (GPS) to locate the user, sends the
oppressor [5].
location of the user through SMS to the emergency contact and
police using the Global System for Mobile Communications III. HARDWARE DESCRIPTION
(GSM) / General Radio Packet Service (GPRS) technology.
The device also captures the image of the assault and Figure 1 shows the block diagram of the smart wearable
surroundings of the user or victim using USB Web Camera device system consisting of Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+
interfaced to the device and sends it as an E-mail alert to the board, GPS module, GSM module for SMS alert, USB
emergency contact soon after the user presses the panic button camera, buzzer, and a push button switch used as a panic
present on Smart wearable device system. button.
Keywords—Raspberry Pi3, IoT, GPS, GSM, E-mail alert
Raspberry GSM Module
Push Pi3 (A SMS Alert
I. INTRODUCTION Button with User GPS
The present generation is striving for equal rights, where Switch location link is
men, women and every person is getting equal rights, sent to emergency
responsibilities and work load is shared equally too. With contact mobile)
this, the working schedule for women are also changing and
they are being allocated with different working shifts, in the
daytime or even in the nighttime. So, improving the security GPS Image captured by
of women and children is very important, especially during Module Webcam and User
the night times. Women may have to use various available GPS location link
means of transport to reach their offices or home during late
are sent as an
night. The smart wearable device system presented here
Email to
consists of a push button switch used as a panic button.
Whenever the person wearing the device gets into trouble, emergency
he or she pushes the button. Soon after pushing the panic contact
button, GPS module interfaced with the system locates the USB
user and sends the location of the user (person wearing the Webcam Buzzer
device) to the emergency contact and police using the GSM
module. The USB camera captures the image of the
surroundings of the user and Pi sends an E-mail with the
captured image and alert message to the emergency contact. Fig. 1. Block Diagram of Smart Wearable Device System

II. LITERATURE REVIEW A. Salient Features of Raspberry Pi3 Model B+

Ruman et al developed a safety assistant for women Raspberry Pi is a mini card sized computer that can be
using Arduino to locate the victim, alerting the concerned connected to your TV, or computer and is capable of doing
person and the police and also generating an electrical shock what a mini computer can do. It has a Broadcom BCM2837
for defense [1]. Sharma et al used Raspberry Pi to design a Quad Core Processor running at 1.3GHz with 1GB SDRAM
smart shoe which is used as a tracker for women, children and 4 USB 2.0 ports (Fig. 2). There is no inbuilt storage in
and also elders provided with the GPS module and also as Raspberry Pi. The operating system for the Raspberry Pi is
self- defense mechanism using buzzer [2]. Abhipriya et al loaded into the SD card whose storage can range from 8GB
implemented a reliable system which protects the victim to 64GB. It has 40 pins, out of which 26 are GPIO pins

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including UART, four PWM channels, I2C bus, SPI bus, 5V 1722.798,N : Latitude 17 deg 22.862' N
and GND. It has a BCM43143 Wi-Fi onboard and Bluetooth
Low Energy (BLE) onboard and also has a Camera Serial 7828.027,E : Longitude 78 deg 28.027' E
Interface port to connect Pi camera through which we can
take HD videos and still photographs [6].

Fig. 3. GPS Receiver Module

Fig. 2. Raspberry Pi3 Model B+ Board
C. Features of GSM Module
B. User Location estimation using GPS Module Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a
Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based standard used for 2G cellular networks. The SIM 900A
navigation system consisting of 24 satellites and is mobile communication modem is used here. A GSM
developed by the U.S. Department of Defense. A GPS module or a GPRS module is a chip or circuit that will be
receiver computes the user location in three dimensions, viz. used to establish communication between a mobile device or
latitude, longitude and height by using the signals from a computing machine and a GSM or GPRS system. It uses
minimum of four satellites. Each satellite transmits two Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) technique for
PRN codes (Pseudo Random Noise Code), viz. Coarse communication purpose. It will have a SIM slot where the
Acquisition (C/A) code and Precision (P) code along with SIM card is inserted and by using AT commands, SMS
navigation data which comprises of the satellite ephemeris. messages can be sent to the registered mobile number. It
The PRN codes are used to obtain the range or distance operates on a supply voltage of 9-12 V DC. Figure 4 shows
between the satellite and the receiver. The ephemeris data the GSM Module [9].
are used to compute the satellite position. By using the
signals from four satellites and the corresponding ranges
(pseudorange), a GPS receiver estimates the four unknowns,
i.e. user position (x, y, z) and the satellite receiver clock
offset. The GPS signals are transmitted on two L-band
frequencies L1(1575.42 MHz) and L2(1227.60 MHz) [7].
Figure 3 shows the commercially available GPS module.
The commercially available GPS module provides raw
GPS data which can be converted to the desired format after
post-processing. The portable GPS receivers generate GPS
data in National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA)
format. Each NMEA sentence is prefixed with a $ symbol, a
4-5 letter code that signifies the information contained within
the sentence and comma separates each value. The NMEA
data format provides various output messages. One of the
commonly used NMEA sentence is the “GPRMC” which
provides the GPS position, velocity, and time information.
The user position is represented in the World Geodetic Fig. 4. SIM900A GSM Module
System 1984 (WGS84).
A sample $GPRMC sentence is as follows: D. USB Web Camera
USB Web camera is used to capture image, videos and
$GPRMC,114016,A,1722.862,N,7828.027,E,026.8,085. also for live streaming. It can be connected to the device
5,230215,003.4,W*6A used by the USB port. It allows data rate up to 400 Mbytes
The description of various fields in the above GPRMC per second and consumes less than 1 W of power through
sentence can be found elsewhere [8]. From the NMEA data, USB. A webcam usually consists of a lens, an image sensor
the following two parameters are extracted by the Raspberry and electronic circuitry, may also include one or two
Pi: microphones. Figure 5 shows the USB Web camera.

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 B. Python Language

Fig. 5. USB Web Camera

E. Buzzer
A buzzer is an audio signaling device which may be
mechanical, electromechanical or piezoelectric. It converts
electrical energy into sound. When power is applied to the Fig. 7. PuTTY Configuration
buzzer it causes the ceramic disk to contract or expand, thus
it causes the surrounding disc to vibrate and that is the V. SCHEMATIC DIAGRAM AND FLOWCHART
sound that we hear. Figure 6 shows the buzzer.
The schematic diagram of the smart wearable device
system is shown in Fig. 8. It shows the interfacing of
various components like GPS, GSM, USB camera, buzzer to
the Raspberry Pi board. This schematic is prepared using
Fritzing software by importing components from Adafruit
library.

Fig. 6. Buzzer

IV. SOFTWARE TOOLS

A. PuTTY Software
PuTTY is a free and open source terminal emulator
including SCP, SSH and rlogin network protocols. It is a
versatile tool for remote access to another computer. We can
use it to emulate another operating system or for secure data
transfer even over public domain [10]. It’s used more often
by people who want secure remote shell access to Unix or
Linux system. Figure 7 shows the PuTTY configuration.
Fig. 8. Schematic Diagram
Python is developed by Guido van Rossum at the
National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer The flowchart of the smart wearable device system
Science in the Netherlands. It is a high-level, interpreted, describes the flow of operations that take place in the
interactive and object-oriented scripting language [11]. system. When the system is powered on, the Raspberry Pi,
Python is highly readable and has fewer syntactical GPS and GSM modules are initialized. When the user finds
constructions than other languages. It supports a trouble, push button will be pressed by him. As soon as
multiple programming paradigms including structured, the panic button is pressed, GPS location is read by the Pi,
object oriented and functional programming. Interpreted the user location link is sent to the emergency contact and
means that we don’t need to compile the program before police using the GSM module. Also, the USB web camera
executing it. It has many predefined libraries due to which captures the image of the victim, assault and the
programming in python becomes an easy task. It supports surroundings and sends the images as an email to the
Unix, Linux and Windows based operating systems. Python respective authorities, along with the location link which
can run on wide number of hardware platforms and supports can be opened in Google maps. This alert and security
GUI applications as well. These GUI applications can be system can thus help in saving the victim. The buzzer also
ported to many system calls, libraries, etc. It provides better gets on, thereby alerting the surrounding people too. Figure
support for large programs as compared to shell scripting. 9 shows the flowchart of the system.

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 VII. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Start
Figure 11 shows the snapshot of the SMS alert with
Google map location link received in the mobile of the
emergency contact. By clicking the link, the care taker or
police can know the exact location of the victim and reach
Initialization of Raspberry Pi, the place or inform the nearest police station to protect the
GSM and GPS modules victim.

GPS
location of
the
No Panic Button Yes user is sent
pressed by as text
User as in message to
trouble? emergency
contacts
using
Yes GSM

Camera module
captures
the image of the
culprit and sends as
an email to
emergency contact

Buzzer ON
Fig. 11. SMS alert with User GPS location (Google map) link sent to the
mobile of the emergency contact

Figure 12 shows the snapshot of the Google map

Stop location of the victim (user).

Fig. 9. Flowchart showing sequence of operations that take place in the

Smart Wearable Device system

VI. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP

Figure 1 shows the experimental setup of the system.

Fig. 10. Experimental Setup Fig. 12. User Location Tracked on Google maps

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 Figure 13 shows the snapshot of the email alert sent to VIII. CONCLUSIONS
the emergency contact along with the captured image of the In this paper, a Raspberry Pi based smart wearable
surrounding area where the user (victim) is located. device system for Women safety is implemented using GPS
and GSM technology. The system provides safety and
security not only for women, but also for other people
(especially elderly persons and children) in every walk of
their life. The advantage of using Raspberry Pi3 Model B+
is that it has an in-built Wi-Fi module that can connect to the
internet, without use of an external router. It can thus send
an email alert to the predefined contact. The system can be
made portable by fixing all the components inside a small
enclosure and making it battery operated.
REFERENCES
[1] M. R. Ruman, J. K. Badhon and S. Saha, "Safety Assistant And
Harassment Prevention For Women," 5th International Conference on
Advances in Electrical Engineering (ICAEE), Dhaka, Bangladesh,
2019, pp. 346-350.
[2] V. Sharma, Y. Tomar and D. Vydeki, "Smart Shoe for Women
Safety," IEEE 10th International Conference on Awareness Science
and Technology (ICAST), Morioka, Japan, 2019, pp. 1-4.
[3] R. Abhipriya, S. Aysha, K. Gayathri and K. Kathiravan, "3S: A radio
identification based continuous spectrum sensing protocol for safety
of women in cognitive radio networks," International Conference on
Communication and Signal Processing (ICCSP), Chennai, 2017, pp.
Fig. 13. Email alert with User location (Google map) link sent to email of 2042-2046.
the emergency contact along with captured image of the surrounding [4] D. Chitkara, N. Sachdeva and Y. Dev Vashisht, "Design of a women
area safety device," IEEE Region 10 Humanitarian Technology
Conference (R10-HTC), Agra, 2016, pp. 1-3.
Figure 14 shows the captured image by webcam of the [5] L. Otterson and D. Dufner, "Integrating technology into the mission
surrounding area where the user (victim) is located. of a women's center: creating a women's community with
technology," International Symposium on Technology and Society -
Women and Technology: Historical, Societal, and Professional
Perspectives. Proceedings. Networking the World (Cat.
No.99CH37005), New Brunswick, NJ, USA, 1999, pp. 393-398.
[6] https://www.raspberrypi.org/
[7] https://www.gps.gov/
[8] http://www.elgps.com/public_ftp/Documentos/SIRF_Protocol.pdf
[9] https://www.rhydolabz.com/
[10] https://putty.en.softonic.com/
[11] Richard L. Halterman, “Learning to Program with Python”, 2011
(www.cs.uky.edu/).

Fig. 14. Image captured by the Webcam when the user presses the panic
button

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