Public Transport Announcement Device For The Blind Using RFID- And ARM-Based Platform

This report presents the development of a public transport announcement device for the blind using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and ARM-based platform. The device functions to notify the blind person of the arrival and determining the identity of the bus using voice announcement. The device also constantly notifies the blind person of the next station ones the blind has departed the desired bus. The RFID tag chosen for this project is of active RFID type since the requirement is to detect a bus at a few tens of meter range. The RFID is based on nRF24L01+ transceiver module. This RFID operate at 2.4GHz frequency which is a free ISM band. Upon testing, the receiver was able to detect the ID transmitted up to 150feet in open air and direct line of sight condition. A programmer device which functions to program the RFID tag with a desired ID is also designed. The ARM-based Platform used is Freescale Freedom FRDM-KL25Z board which is based on 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0+ Core Processor. The RFID is interfaced with FRDM-KL25Z board via SPI communication. As for sound module, WTV020-SD MODULE is chosen and this module communicates with the FRDM-KL25Z board using virtual serial port created using digital I/O`s..