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Welcome to the Fochica wiki!
Fochica™, Forgotten Child in Car Alert, is a no hassle, low cost and extensible system that helps prevent forgetting children in vehicles. The system is open source and open hardware. This wiki will contain the instructions and guides for building and using a Fochica. If you are new to Fochica or if you are looking for other information, please see the Fochica website.
If you have questions or comments about the contents of this wiki, please open a new issue on GitHub.
Building a Fochica
Fochica is an extensible system. If you are building your first Fochica or if you are beginner electronics hobbyist it is strongly recommended to start with the "Basic build".
Basic build
The basic build supports one child seat, a maximum of one parent connected at the same time and two specific sensors; a capacitive sensor and an on/off sensor at the chest buckle. You can choose to not build/use one of the sensors.
Alternative: this Fochica instructable provides good, high level instructions for building a simple Fochica device.
Intermediate builds
These builds are relatively easy to do. They are supported by the code base and only need minimal changes to enable them.
Adding a second BLE module - so two parents can be connected at the same time to one device
Adding a second seat - if you drive two kids in the same car
Using the device as a mere reminder
Adding car battery discharge protection
BLE extension cable - to increase Bluetooth range and make connection status easily visible
Advanced modifications
ProtoShield build - A Fochica shield on an "off the shelf" PCB
Using an Arduino Mega - Allows for SD card, hardware serial, additional sensors, etc
Build with real-time clock (RTC)
Adding a third BLE module
Adding additional sensors or integrating new type of sensors
Adding external triggers in response to alerts or device state
Adding an indicator LED - to visually show the various states of the system
Using a Fochica
Troubleshooting
Android App guide
Installation and initial setup
UI guide
Resources
Hackaday.io project page
Disclaimer