Adding an IoT Wi-Fi Board to the Head Impact Assessment Prototype in Contact Sports

Head injuries are considered one of serious and worrying injuries for players and doctors due to the difficulty of examining the injured player at the time of injury and also the difficulty of following up the condition of the player's head during the period of exercise. Head Impact Prototype is a device that follows player's head status instantaneously, as it is fixed in player's helmet, which helps the specialist and doctor in early detection of traumatic brain injury and concussion. The goal of the project is to find a cheap and convenient transmission technology that able to transfer the Head Impact Prototype data and display it on smart devices such as portable smartphones or computers in order to be examined and followed up by health staff, doctors,.. etc. Internet of Things (IoT) system has been chosen as a suitable solution for this project, since the technology connects the device to the Internet, which allows specialists to control and display the received data from distance, due to the wide prevalence of internet networks. Thereupon, Particle Photon has been chosen to represent an IoT device, since it is considered one of the cheapest microcontrollers that support this technology, as well as small in size, low power consumption, high performance and was available in Metropolia University lab. A Particle Photon has been added to Head Impact Prototype by connecting to Adafruit Feather nRF52840 Express microcontroller over one of data transfer protocols UART. The function of Photon is to receive the transferred data by Adafruit and send it to the Particle Cloud. The transferred data contains values of Accelerometer and Gyroscope which are considered the evaluation of brain movement. This data is stored in Particle Cloud temporary until it is sent again to a platform, where data can be viewed graphically. The graph can be monitored by a specialist or doctor to assess the player's situation