Arduino example: Making a Tracker with the Charlie board

The source code in elderly_monitor provides an example of a tracking device for elderly people monitoring.

What you can use this example for:

With this sketch you can start prototyping applications that can fit into the following use cases:

• elderly people tracking
• position tracking
• step counting (through aggregation of data from the accelerometer)

This example:

• activates the embedded ME310 modem
• reads the data from accelerometer
• connects the board to GSM modem to send sms message
• reads the button state if pressed (if it sense the pressure for 2 seconds, it send an an alarm to a registered number)
• send the sms data with latitude and longitude and a warning text

Before starting

There are a few checks to get your Charlie board ready for this example.

Download and install the Telit Charlie Board in the Arduino IDE

Go to the Arduino IDE Preferences, and under "Additional Boards Manager URLs" field paste the URL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/telit/arduino-charlie/main/Arduino/package_Telit-board_index.json. Then go to the Boards Manager and search for Telit-Board. This will install the Board Package for the Charlie.

You can find a short article explaining how to do it here https://support.arduino.cc/hc/en-us/articles/360016119519-How-to-add-boards-in-the-board-manager

Download and install the required Libraries

Download the arduino-me310-library and arduino-tlt-library, then extract them in your Arduino libraries folder, or install the new libraries from the ZIP files.

These Libraries will simplify the interactions with the ME310G1 Module.

Install the BMA400 library

In order to read data from the embedded BOSCH BMA400 accelerometer, download the telit BMA400-API library porting and install as explained in the previous section.

SIM card and antenna requirements

Please check with your provider that the SIM card has an associated number, and is able to send SMS messages (insert it in a cell phone and try sending a message). Also, note that the antenna must comply with the available connectivity protocols in your country (GSM/UMTS/LTE).

Destination mobile phone number

The source code requires to setup a destination phone number where the alert messages will be sent. Please refer to the line below

char remoteNum[20] = "+39XXXXXXXXX";

Additional resources

If you wish to send a google maps link containing the position, there are many posts and threads about the topic, like this one https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30544268/create-google-maps-links-based-on-coordinates