Sitting Tooo Long

On average a person between ages 15 to 65 spends more than 10 hours in a day sitting. The human body requires constant movements to maintain its blood circulation, immune system, muscular growth and digestive system to function as they should be because human skeleton is optimal to a standing posture. But with the long period of sitting makes it hard for the body to keep up the bodily functions normal. This will result in severe effects on the health such as

• Heart Attacks

• Brain Damages

• Digestive problems

• Bad postures

• Muscle growth issues

• Low blood circulation to legs

The solution to overcome these severe issues before one becomes a victim of those is to change his/her sitting habits. They can stand once in a while to allow bodily functions to perform normally without disturbances causing by the sitting posture.

When it comes to routine practices, people tend to forget the schedule. As a solution to this, we can use a design developed using IoT devices to assist each individual with.

My idea is to develop a smart chair using a DPS310 sensor and a kit of Arduino to build up a complete system which can be synced with an Android mobile device to notify user to change his/her sitting posture or simply stand up and walk for a few seconds.

The chair will have a cushion seating. Inside the cushion, the pressure sensor and the Arduino device kit will be installed in a manner such that the user wouldn't feel himself that he's not sitting on a sensor. The sensor will measure the pressure applied on it and send it to the Arduino board. The Arduino board can initiate a connection with the Android phone using a blue-tooth module.

The pressure measurements will vary according to following factors;

• When user sits on the chair

• When user stands up from the chair

• When the user has just taken a meal

• When user leans forward and backwards

We can develop the system to have a per-defined timer to notify user when to stand up when he's been sitting for a quiet a long time. This time interval should be reduced when he has just taken the meal. These different scenarios can be easily measured using high resolution available in the DPS310 sensor.

When the user leans forward and backwards frequently, it implies that he is not comfortable sitting. Then we can provide him with visual notification to the android device to stand and walk awhile and come back to his seat.

The device can be battery powered and since the devices used in the design use minimal power, the battery life time will be higher.