International Journal of Scientific Engineering and Science

Volume 5, Issue 5, pp. 23-25, 2021. ISSN (Online): 2456-7361

Design of Arduino Based Smart Bag

Adeniran, P.O.1, Adejumobi C.A2., Basiru Q3.
1, 2, 3
Science Laboratory Technology Department, The Oke Ogun Polytechnic, Saki, Oyo State, Nigeria
Email address: philad2010 @ yahoo.com1, caadejumbi @ yahoo.com2, Petbabs1234 @ gmail.com3

Abstract— Children have suffered untold plights because of the dehumanizing growth of kidnapping due to widening scale of insecurity in
Nigeria. Many children had been abducted while going or coming from school making the abductees and their families traumatised by the
ordeal of the kidnapping. Child tracking system is widely used all over in the world and it gives the assurance to the parents that their child is
safe from suspicious action but they are not affordable for people in the lower economic class. This brought the need for the proposal of the low
cost smart bag, which will be school child back pack bag with a real time tracking system attached to a secure place in the bag. The proposed
system will make use of Neo-6M GPS module, Arduino Uno microcontroller, GSM800L and powered by Li ion battery. The Neo-6M GPS
module to detect the location of the bag when it goes out of the geofence, that is the permitted area where the child can travel, and send it to the
Arduino Uno microcontroller. The microcontroller will be activated from its sleep mode by the GPS message from the Neo-6M GPS module in
form of latitude and longitude of the exact location of the bag. The microcontroller will also send the location as SMS to the parent’s phone
number via GSM800L module. The message will be sent every five (5) minutes to prolong the battery life and timely tracking of the location. The
exact location will then be tracked on the Google map.

Keywords— Child, microcontroller, bag, message, tracking.

a designated phone number. The process will be repeated

I. INTRODUCTION every five minutes. Thus, it is used as a covert unit which
The widening scale of insecurity in Nigeria is a cause for sends the location data to the monitoring unit i.e.- parent’s
concern as all are affected by it. This has led to the increase in mobile. The data will be used to locate the child on the Google
series of organized crime such as kidnapping and abduction. maps.
Churches, mosques, markets, schools, homes and the highway, The proposed system is a microcontroller based system
all are susceptible to this menace. The kidnapping of all that works by using GPS and GSM technology for tracking the
manner of persons has gained ascendancy in Nigeria. A bag thus the location of the child carrying the bag. All that the
malady previously unknown to the people has rapidly become user has to do is install this embedded system at a secured and
domesticated. According to Davidson (2010), a group of hidden place in the bag.
criminals armed with guns and cell phones apprehend Several tracking devices have been reported but mostly of
unsuspecting victims and drag their victim into a secluded spot vehicle tracking (Maitanmi et al., 2013, Sanaiah et al. 2015,).
and begin to make phone calls to whomever and demand for a Some other works have also been reported on luggage bag
ransom. tracking (Dexter et al., 2017), child time table management
The significant impact of kidnapping and other associated and tracking (Athul et al., 2016)
crimes is becoming worrisome and perplexing not only to
Nigerians but to the international, community (Ngwama, II. DESCRIPTION OF THE PROPOSED SYSTEM
2014). The victims were either kidnapped for ransom or Global Positioning System
rituals. Umanah (2009) opined that children have suffered The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a fully-functional
untold plights due to the dehumanizing growth of kidnapping satellite navigation system. The GPS provides specially coded
in Nigeria. Many children had been abducted while going or satellite signals that can be processed in a GPS receiver,
coming from school. The abductees and their families are enabling the receiver to compute position, velocity and time.
traumatised by the ordeal of kidnapping. The architectural components of GPS are typically referred to
Now a day’s child tracking system is widely used all over as the control segment (ground stations), the space segment
in the world and it gives the assurance to the parents that their (satellites) and the user segment (receivers).
child is safe from suspicious action. This brought the need for Upon taking in all available satellite signals, the receiver
the introduction of the smart bag which is a real time tracking compares the time that the satellite sent the signal to the time
system attached to a secure place in the back pack of school it was received for each of the available signals.
child. Trilateralization (similar to triangulation) then calculates the
The proposed smart bag is designed to track, monitor and position by comparing the difference among the signals
locate an abducted child. This new technology is basically (Vinod et al., 2018). This GPS system can monitor and find
embedded system that is fitted on to the school bag mostly out the location of an object to be known anywhere on the
back pack, in such a manner that it is not visible to anyone. entire surface GPS systems can be used by anyone for free,
The permitted coverage area (geofence) is set for the system in provided they have the necessary equipment and software
form of latitude and longitude such that it can alert the parents (Oktaf et al., 2019).
or guardian when the child moved out of the permitted area. For the system, the NEO-6 module series is chosen, it is a
Geofencing can be used to confine someone to a particular family of stand-alone GPS receivers featuring the high-
area on the earth. The tracking can be done by sending SMS to

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 International Journal of Scientific Engineering and Science
Volume 5, Issue 5, pp. 23-25, 2021. ISSN (Online): 2456-7361

performance u-box 6 positioning engine. These flexible and and status signaling LED. The working temperature range
cost-effective receivers offer numerous connectivity options in between -400C to 85 ° C.
a miniature 16 x 12.2 x 2.4 mm package. It has a greater
advantage due to its innovative design and technology which
suppresses jamming sources and mitigates multipath effects,
this gives NEO-6 GPS receivers excellent navigation
performance even in the most challenging environments.
A complete GPS module with an active antenna integrated,
and a built-in EEPROM to save configuration parameter data.
It is built-in 25 x 25 x 4mm ceramic active antenna provides
strong satellite search capability. It is also equipped with
power and signal indicator lights and data backup battery and Fig. 2. SIM800L GSM module
uses 3-5V power supply. The default baud rate of 9600bps Microcontroller
with interface RS232 TTL.
Microcontroller is a small computer on single integrated
circuits containing processor core, memory and programmable
input/output reference. For this system Arduino UNO3
microcontroller is chosen, because it can easily interface with
the system and it can easily programmed for operation of
desired performance. It is microcontroller board and based on
the Atmel’s ATmega328 microcontroller, it has a 16 MHz
ceramic resonator, a USB connection, a power jack with a
AC-to-DC adapter or battery to get started, an ICSP header, a
reset button, 6 analog inputs and 14 digital input/output pins
(of which 6 can be used as PWM outputs). The board has 32
Fig. 1. Neo-6M GPS module
KB flash memory of which 0.5 KB is used by boot-loader, 2
GSM Modem KB of SRAM and 1 KB of EEPROM. The Arduino system
The acronym GSM mean Global System for Mobile offers a set of analog and digital pins that can be integrated to
Communications. GSM modem a specialized type of modem many other boards and circuits which absolutely have
which accepts a SIM card, and operates over a subscription to different functions in a design. Arduino board provides a USB
a mobile operator, just like a mobile phone (Oktaf et al., serial communication interfaces for loading the codes from
2019). Also they have IMEI (International Mobile Equipment computer. For the uploading of the codes, Arduino has
Identity) number similar to mobile phones for their prepared its own software called integrated development
identification. environment (IDE) which completely supports C and C++
GSM digitizes and compresses data, then sends it down a programming languages (May and Htay, 2020).
channel with two other streams of user data, each in its own
time slot. It operates at either the 900 MHz or 1,800 MHz
frequency band. It supports voice calls and data transfer
speeds of up to 9.6 Kbit/s, together with the transmission of
SMS (Short Message Service) (Vinod et al., 2018)
The MODEM needs AT commands, for interacting with
processor or controller, which are communicated through
serial communication. These commands are sent by the
controller/processor. The modem sends back a result after it
receives a command. Different AT commands supported by
the modem can be sent by the processor/controller/computer
to interact with the GSM and GPRS cellular network. Fig. 3. Arduino Uno R3
The SIM 800L is chosen for the smart bag system, it has III. OPERATION THE PROPOSED SYSTEM
an ability to carry 64 kbps to 120 Mbps of data rates. The
power supply voltage is between 3.8V - 4.2V while the The location of the child’s school as well as the child’s
recommended supply voltage is 4V. Its power consumption in route home is programmed into theArduino Uno microntroller
the sleep mode is less than 2.0mA and in an idle mode, the in term of its longitude and latitude. The permitted route for
power consumption is less than 7.0mA. The GSM the child also set in form of longitude and latitude
transmission (avg) is 350 mA and GSM transmission (peak) is (geofencing).
2000mA. The module is of compact size 25 x 23 mm and has The microcontroller is set the sleep mode to minimize
UART (max. 2.8V) interface and AT commands. The SIM power consumption from the battery. If the bag is moved
card socket supports micro SIM Quad Band frequency of 850 / outside the geofence, the Neo-6M GPS module will detect the
950 / 1800 /1900 MHz. It comes with IPX antenna connector longitude and latitude of the location and send it to the

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 International Journal of Scientific Engineering and Science
Volume 5, Issue 5, pp. 23-25, 2021. ISSN (Online): 2456-7361

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Recommendation
The designed system has not reached its peak point, better
technologies could still be applied to deign wearable trackers
with micro components.

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