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