A smart breathalyzer system for Ghana

Date

2019

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Abstract

Imagine a five-year-old boy losing his life by being knocked down by a drunk driver who has been intoxicated with alcohol. The driver’s carelessness will cause the family of the little child so much pain, as well as lead to a significant loss of human resources in the country. Road accident according to research has been the second leading cause of death in Ghana. While several countries in the world invest in finding solutions to road accidents [1], little is done by the country to tackle the issue. This capstone project seeks to help reduce or eliminate road accidents by tackling drunk driving, which is one of the preventable causes of a road accident. The paper focuses on reducing the influence of human activities such as corruption in the enforcement drunk driving laws, by developing a breathalyzer system that leverages on digitization, by incorporating a fingerprint sensor for user authentication, a web server which acts as a repository for all alcohol tests and check number of times users violate drunk driving laws. The paper discusses extensive research and implemented work to design a smart breathalyzer system that incorporates the internet of things to tackle the issue of road accidents. The paper explores the use of a fuel cell sensor for alcohol detection, fingerprint sensor for configuration of user authentication. It describes how the GPS model provided various test locations, and the procedure the microcontroller communicated to the database through the GSM module. The paper describes a remote database for the Ghanaian police system which serves as a repository for drunk driving law violations and road accidents management. The paper concludes on the complexity of configuring the alcohol fuel cell sensor, since the fuel cell sensor performs accurate measurement of user breath concentration. The paper also concludes on the importance of internet of things which combines web development and basic electronics in tackling the problem of drunk driving free from the influence of corruption.

Description

Capstone Project submitted to the Department of Engineering, Ashesi University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, April 2019

Keywords

drunk driving, breathalyzer system, Ghana, Internet of Things (IoT), hardware, web-based application, fingerprint sensor

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