A Remote Baby Surveillance System with RFID and GPS Tracking

In the 21st century, sending babies or children to daycare centres has become more and more common among young guardians. The balance between full-time work and child care is increasingly challenging nowadays. In Malaysia, thousands of child abuse cases have been reported from babysitting centres every year, which indeed triggers the anxiety and stress of the guardians. Hence, this paper proposes to construct a remote baby surveillance system with radio-frequency identification (RFID) and global positioning system (GPS) tracking. With the incorporation of the Internet of Things (IoT), a sensor-based microcontroller is used to detect the conditions of the baby as well as the surrounding environment and then display the real-time data as well as notifications to alert the guardians via a mobile application. These conditions include the crying and waking of the baby, as well as temperature, the mattress's wetness, and moving objects around the baby. In addition, RFID and GPS location tracking are implemented to ensure the safety of the baby, while white noise is used to increase the comfort of the baby. In the end, a prototype has been successfully developed for functionality and reliability testing. Several experiments have been conducted to measure the efficiency of the mattress's wetness detection, the RFID transmission range, the frequency spectrum of white noise, and also the output power of the solar panel. The proposed system is expected to assist guardians in ensuring the safety and comfort of their babies remotely, as well as prevent any occurrence of child abuse.