The objective of my project is to automatically detect rhonchi, or snoring, and alleviate it by adjusting the bed’s surface angle. I plan to make a system that consists of a microphone for snore detection, a microcomputer for snore recognition and motor control, a stepping motor controller board, a stepping motor, a bed, and mechanism to lift and lower the bed.
My father snores, which bothers my mother a lot. Many people have the same problem. This was the initiative for me figure out a way to relieve snoring while keeping the snorer asleep.
When a sleeper is snoring, his head’s angle relative to the ground can cause his tongue to partially block his throat. So if the surface angle of the bed he is lying on is adjusted, the blockage and snoring will be alleviated without waking up the sleeper.
The microphone is connected to the microcomputer’s audio input jack. The stepping motor controller board is connected to the microcomputer’s serial port (COM port). Directed by the microcomputer, the controller board sends out pulse signals to drive the stepping motor in order to adjust the surface angle of the bed.
To implement this system I will use voice recognition to differentiate between environmental noise and actual snoring through a snore recognition program, which I will write in C. The microcomputer will read input from the microphone and recognize the snore sound, executing the motor control routine to raise the headboard side of the bed. In this way, I hope to keep the angle of sleeper’s throat to a certain degree to alleviate snoring.
Over these past few weeks, I've been working on the body of the bed and its electronic connections. I used a hacksaw and industrial adhesive to make the frame. Then I soldered together a motor controller board (green chip) connected to a parellel port cable which I'll use to communicate with th...
