Alzheimer's patients and people with severe memory loss often have problems remembering where they are located and wander outside of their homes. Then, caregivers are unaware that their family members have left and only find out when they come home. Sadly, law enforcement find numerous of these afflicted people injured or killed days after they left. In order to combat this issue, Carolina, Kwesi, Quinn, Baron, and I designed a tracking bracelet that would be able to identify the location of the person wearing it. A bluetooth beacon is attached to the bracelet in order to display the exact spot of the patient using a Raspberry Pi and computer monitor. To further the practicality of our idea, we could use GPS technology to track a person across a larger radius from the Raspberry Pi to give caretakers better peace of mind.

The bracelet design is based on a neuron, which is what Alzheimer's Disease attacks in a person's brain. On the underside of the bracelet, a Gimbal Qualcomm Bluetooth Beacon was attached to track a person. Quinn and Baron, who worked on the technological aspect of the project, used an article from Truth Labs to code the bluetooth beacon using Java. We used Nervous System Jewelry, which is a company that creates jewelry using the human body, as the main precedent for the bracelet. Carolina, Kwesi, and I designed the bracelet through the Rhino 3-D Modeling program. This allowed us to print multiple designs and iterations with easy access to our file on the school computers and 3-D printers. 

Carolina, Kwesi, and I initially printed two designs for the bracelet, one that was large and one that was small. We later realized that neither of them were going to fit around a person's wrist or hold the bluetooth beacon. Therefore, we increased the length of the chain and the nucleus of our neuron. But, we ran into the problem of fitting the entire bracelet on the printer's bed. We had to separate the bracelet into three separate parts, the nucleus, the chain, and the clip, and have places that they could attach together. We used one of the original designs to practice molding the bracelet around someone's wrist. This was accomplished through the boiling of water and a hot plate. Finally, we sculpted the final bracelet around my wrist and attached the other pieces, including the bluetooth beacon, for the final images.

The idea to track people with Alzheimer's Disease has already been implemented in many hospitals and senior living facilities, but our project focuses on home use. For the future, we would need to develop a process that would alert caregivers when their family member has left the home and use more advanced technology to be able to track people over a greater distance. The original design for the bracelet is a symbol for people with the disease, a more functional device would need to be made if this project would be used by the general public. The neuron tracking bracelet is one of the introductory steps in helping keep the millions of people suffering from Alzheimer's Disease and memory loss safe for the future.