Boy creates face recognition security system for his aunt with dementia

Freddie Howells’ great aunt is 88-years old, suffers from dementia and lives alone at home. But the family was increasingly worried about episodes where she had let strangers inside the house. “I was concerned about the fact she never knew if people visited and had a lot of cold callers and let people in. The next thing, she's spent £120 on insurance, had a washing machine and signed up to anything”, Freddie’s mum explained.
So, at 12 years of age, Freddie decided to take action and create a solutions for the problem. "He's always been creative but this is his biggest project. When it comes to tech, he likes to solve a problem", says he’s mum.

Freddie created a facial recognition system called Door Pi Plus. The system has motion sensor attached to the front door, that detects one someone gets close. When that happens, the microcomputer that control the system activates the camera mounted on the door to take a picture of the visitor. Then, the system runs the picture through a database of “know” faces, which includes friends and family members.

To make sure the system is fail-proof, Freddie added a two-step authentication procedure where in, if a face is recognized, the person is then asked to scan an ID tag. If bouth the picture and the ID card are approved by the system, the door unlocks and the person is allowed to enter. f not, the door stays locked and an alert is shown that prompts the visitor to call a specific member in order to ask permission to enter.

Freddie has learnt coding at a very young age, as his mother explains: “He taught himself how to do it. He had a coding club at primary school so he had basic computer skills.” With his invention, Freddie won the Young Innovator category at the Collaborate to Innovate Awards and the Junior Engineer category at The Big Bang Competition.

Adapted from: https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/usk-dementia-invention-fre...
https://www.itv.com/news/wales/2019-03-13/schoolboy-invents-home-securit...

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