Comunicação bidirecional para plataforma embarcada do protegemed

Abstract

The use of electricity leads modern society, especially when used to power electronic equipment. These equipment s are essential for the life of the people, being used in the most diverse areas. Among them, the medical area, where the equipment save lives when in normal operation. However, they may fail and direct some of the energy they consume to the patient in contact with them. Therefore, ways to monitor such equipment failures are needed. One of them is the Protegemed project, which checks the electric current of the electromedical equipment (EEM) during surgeries and, if it detects an anomaly, capture the sets of instantaneous values of these currents and forwards them via network connection to a server where they are analyzed by supporting software. However, the Protegemed needs a new functionality that makes it able to modify variables in the firmware of microcontroller embedded in the electrical outlets panel that feeds the EEM in a surgery room. This change must occur, via a network connection, every time an EEM is plugged in. The necessary modification refers to two variables, which today contain fixed values, determined in the firmware installation, for all the EEM connected to the panel. These variables contain the minimum effective value of leakage current and supply current for each EEM being monitored. This minimum limit, if exceeded, initiates the hazard alert procedure. It is a limit that is specific to each device, and the Protegemed project cannot currently change this value in the microcontroller firmware embedded in the panel, using, improperly, the same value, for example, for a heart monitor and for a defibrillator. The Protegemed cannot make this change because it operates with only one direction for the traffic of this data, from the units that monitor the equipment (modules embedded in the outlets panel) to a server. Therefore, this study aims to extend the single way of communication, providing a bidirectional communication for the Protegemed. To do this, it uses the WebSocket protocol, which provides bidirectional, full-duplex and persistent communication. With the use of the bidirectional communication, it was possible to send commands to the embedded modules. Test results demonstrate that the implementation of the bidirectional communication using the WebSocket protocol provides stability and reliability, as well processing messages between clients of the bidirectional communication within time intervals compatible with the need for the Protegemed.