My mother is living alone in her house and we are getting to the point where she might not be able to live alone. I built "Still Kicking", a picture frame that monitors her motion and sends back basic reports and can detect falls and sleep quality to a phone app, to help give her more time at home.
It's just an mmWave sensor connected to an ESP32. But it works nicely, and I'm thinking of starting a company making them, though I'm not clear if the elderly would be ok with this minimal (no camera) intrusion.
It would just work out of the box.. the real one would have a small cell modem so it wouldn't need any networking setup, and it would act as a gateway if you have more than one in a house. There are industrial versions of this for nursing homes. This would be a bit more warm and fuzzy for home use.
Mom had a stroke a few years ago and while thankfully she's recovered well, I'd buy this. Having designed for seniors and helped senior care focused companies, it's not so much the senior that you'd sell to but their adult children.
I own a national home care provider (in 13 states) and EHR. We are looking for products like this. Book office hours if you’re interested in discussing:
I love it. As a physician, I see so many cases of elderly patients who have fallen and not been found for hours if not days.
In elder care, I am building https://statphone.com - one emergency number that rings multiple family members simultaneously and breaks through DND. Would love to chat/collaborate.
There was a Minnesota company called Healthsense (was acquired by GreatCall which was then acquired by BestBuy, not sure if the company/tech exists anymore) that had a similar approach on a broader scale. Their system used a bunch of mundane smart home sensors in the usual configuration (e.g. contact sensors on doors, motion sensors, etc) but also for tracking patterns and habits, like the refrigerator door, toilet seat, bed, etc. The idea being that an abrupt shift in behavior would trigger a notice for a loved one or nurse to check in. I always thought this was a cool idea and it's a shame it didn't take off a bit more.
The question of "intrusion" was always interesting to me because old folks often face going from nothing to assisted living or nursing home which is often quite intrusive, where somewhat ironically adding a bunch of sensors to your home allows you a bit more privacy.
Kind of a tangent, but I like your type of system as an alternative to the emergency pendants. It always struck me as strange to expect old folks at risk of fall to remember to charge and wear a pendant at all times.
Look into some of the products and services used in Japan for elderly care at home.
My FIL, in his late 80's was living at home alone. My wife used a monitoring service, provided by local package delivery company. They installed motion sensors in the toilet and on the door. If no motion detected for 24 hours, the company will alert my wife by phone and send the nearest delivery driver to check on him.
I myself have tried Home Assistant setup on Raspberry Pi and variety of sensors for different purposes.
I always talked with the people I managed about their career goals, and always tried to adapt their job to be a closer fit to those goals. When I couldn't do that I would acknowledge that and even help them find a different job that did fit.
How else can we expect to get the best out of people?
Just checked out MoveOMeter.com Great idea - and I get how pitching to "an old coot" like my parents would get a laugh out of them before an insulting hurtful pass. Very clever positioning - I'd lean in on that. Your audience is there and waiting - which is tricky since your customer is actually the sales person and you need to give them the training up front to close the deal with their elder. Nice work!
But make climate control 3 knobs: Fan speed + off, temperature and output ports. Put the AC button inside the temperature knob, and the 'recirculate' button inside the output ports knob.
With the radio have a push on/off volume knob that starts up at the SAME volume as always (i.e. relative, not absolute) and NOT the previous volume. The volume knob should have some resistance to it. Opposite that have a tune knob for precise tuning, and pressing that gets you into setup and navigates you through it. This should have the same resistance, but the outside has some indents so you know it's not the volume knob.
Have 6 preset buttons and 3 'banks' with a single 'next bank' button. pressing and holding a preset will save it with a beep for confirmation.
On the steering wheel: up/dn for radio should be seek, not next/previous preset. There are 6 nice big buttons for presets but when traveling seek up/dn is the main way we change music.
On the door have the rear view mirror controls, and above that have a knob for dashboard light brightness.
While we're dreaming, just have an interchangeable panel. Allow 3rd parties to make whatever dials etc. the customer wants. And if it were up to me I'd also get rid of the screen entirely and only have a HUD for navigation. It will never happen, let alone become mainstream, but dreaming is nice sometimes.
I was imagining a console that's at easy arms reach that's fixed into interior and don't require taking eyes of the road. The S3XY buttons look pretty cool, but they don't seem to be able to give you the resistive feel of something fastened to the interior. The Knob provides something like a console, but it seems pretty limited in how many tactile options it provides and you still need to take your eyes of the road. A number of simple dials with tactile clicks and fixed positions provide a user interface that don't require visual confirmation.
And touchscreens are another visual distraction. I think they're a contributor to the increasing vehicle accident and mortality rates. Ideally, nothing should take your mind/eyes off the road. A HUD for navigation and dashboard guages/alerts is about all anyone 'needs' in terms of display, but in the end it's about what individuals want, human lives be damned.
(I say kinda because you still get a bit of peripheral vision from HUD. Traditional dash behind steering wheel is undoubtedly worse - this has been proven decades ago).
This data says otherwise. I'm certain pedestrian mortality has been increasing, and by the looks of this graph it looks like 'other road user' deaths are trending up too. If you have data to support your claim, keen to see it.
The glance time might be affected by a lack of contrast? Or perhaps the novelty of using a HUD? It's possibly right, but I'd want to see more study on the 'why' it's worse and whether that's a technical thing.
This also needs to be divided per miles driven as those are constantly increasing.
Finally, my guess pedestrians are disproportionately more at fault here - mostly impairment (meth, fentanyl), but also smartphones and headphones in particular. Drivers are mostly distracted by phones mostly, not by adjusting climate controls for 2-3 seconds.
> US seems outlier while rest of the world fatalities are decreasing
Europe can be explained by pedestrianisation of cities, congestion taxes, separated bike lanes that encourage bike use, vehicle safety standards that—at least until recent loopholes have emerged—have been keeping dangerous vehicles off the road. Even still, if you look at that graph you'll notice a little uptick in the last 5 years, curiously around the time that screens became more prevalent, but also...
> my guess pedestrians are disproportionately more at fault here - mostly impairment (meth, fentanyl),
A-pillar sizes and bonnet heights have all been increasing, reducing visibility of pedestrians. Sounds like a larger factor to me. People have been getting high and drunk behind the wheel for decades, but maybe it's more prevalent now?
> not by adjusting climate controls for 2-3 seconds.
That's really all it takes if a kid decides to chase after a ball on a side street. You might have seen them before they ran from one side past behind an occluding object and emerged on the other, with not enough time for automated systems to respond (if they respond). A lot can change in 2-3 seconds, and I'd be surprised to hear an experienced driver say otherwise.
Heh. FWIW gender-affirming care has been out of vogue lately everywhere around the world, not just US.
Truck issue feels like imported here in NZ. We don't even have f150 here, most popular car is hilux and raptor which are about same height as my people mover.
It's just an mmWave sensor connected to an ESP32. But it works nicely, and I'm thinking of starting a company making them, though I'm not clear if the elderly would be ok with this minimal (no camera) intrusion.
It would just work out of the box.. the real one would have a small cell modem so it wouldn't need any networking setup, and it would act as a gateway if you have more than one in a house. There are industrial versions of this for nursing homes. This would be a bit more warm and fuzzy for home use.
https://moveometer.com
reply