Configuração remota para a plataforma embarcada do Protegemed

Abstract

Protegemed is a project to detect microshocks caused by electro medical equipment during surgeries. Shocks as small as 50 milliamperes may result in a cardiac arrest. An embedded device, called “the module”, is used for monitoring the outlets of the surgery room. The device constantly gathers data about the electric currents of these outlets and sends it to a remote server through the network. If anything out of the ordinary is detected, the relevant sta is alerted, which can then perform the necessary actions. The surgery room is a controlled environment, but configuring the module requires physical access to it, since the communication happens in a one-way fashion (i.e.: from the module to the server). To end this predicament, a way of configuring the device remotely is proposed, through a new application-layer protocol. The protocol is used over a WebSocket connection and defines the format and semantics of the messages to be exchanged, both of which are based on HTTP. The new protocol is then implemented and used in Protegemed to perform bidirectional communication between a web browser and the embedded device through a WebSocket server. The protocol is defined, implemented and then validated. The same is done for the control and the configuration commands. Afterwards, the device is configured and controlled remotely using the protocol. The protocol itself is defined in a general way, enabling it to be used for message exchanging in other embedded projects.