Hobby Project – Bluetooth device

Hello,
I'm a sophomore and I'm trying to do a side engineering project to put on my resume and maybe eventually turn it into a senior project years from now.

I'm trying to create a device similar to the lifeline device for the elderly. This device will have a button such that when someone presses the button, an alert is sent to the smartphone.

'm not sure where exactly i'm going with this eventually but this is just a start for me.

My question is: how do I begin? I know I want the communication to be via bluetooth.
I appreciate your help.

Are you sure about bluetooth, the reach is not so wide. If u use bluetooth I suppose the elderly has to have both the phone as well as your pushbutton and then why use a separate button? Build an app to the phone instead.

Hi,

Thanks for your response. The point of the device is such that someone else close by will get an alert on the smartphone.

For instance, if someone is in a room, that person can press a button (a small button that can be tied around the neck or wrist) which will then trigger the smartphone of someone else that's some distance from that room.

I'm sorry if it doesn't make sense.

Bluetooth by its nature is a personal network where its range is limited to no more then 10 meters LOS(Line of Sight). If those constraints are acceptable, then there are many solutions available to ponder from design your own BT(Bluetooth) stack, to using embedded linux or Android and using their stack, to using an off the shelf stack in a box.

I have used the latter solution where all my interfaces to BT are encapsulated to a simple Serial/I2C/SPI interface. My commands to BT are simple AT modem commands that allow me to instantiate a simple BT interface in different flavors such as a virtual Serial port to a more sophisticated HID interface.

Check out companies such as BlueRadios. I know there are many others. I think every major silicon company has there own brew.....