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A Humanitarian Engineering Problem
zrosener asks: "A have a friend who has ALS (Stephen Hawking's ailment), a particularly nasty disease in which her motor neurons deteriorate over time, slowly waylaying her. She is in pretty bad shape now, and her movement is restricted to moving her eyes, and very limited (1 inch in each direction) hand movement. She has very light bell that she uses to wake up her husband when she needs assistance, but as her strength wanes it is becoming less and less effective. She is afraid at night now that if something were to go wrong she would not be able to rouse her husband. My challenge to you is to design a noise-making-husband-alerting device cheaply and quickly assembled from strip mall parts (Radioshack, Walmart, etc.) that she could use with her extremely restricted movement. Buttons are out of the questions, as are anything that requires gripping. Analog answers are encouraged too! Please email all suggestions or post them."
why not a touch pad that plays britney spears hit me baby one more time when any pressure is applied? WHO COULD SLEEP THROUGH THAT????
Have something that can read the presense and absence of a retina. Now have it be able to read morse code. Then it's a matter of blinking a bunch of times. :)
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
1) how's her breath control? If it's good, you could set up something that she could blow on-- say, a sustained puff of greater than 1 second could trigger the bell. You'd need a room with relatively still air, but it's otherwise a straigt-forward problem
2) perhaps a more intrusive than she'd accept, but something based on jaw clench is possible
3) voice recognition... not a radio shack problem, i'm afraid tho
Of course, you'd need a second one to signal when the first one's batteries go out.
And and third to do that for the second.
And a fourth to do that for the third.
She has an infinite number of fingers right? That will solve this. If not, I guess you should just build one.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
When the wife becomes nervous her heart rate probably goes up. Get a heart rate monitor that has an upper target rate alarm. Set it to a reasonable value through trial and error.
The middle mind speaks!
Why not have a small IR beam sensor (you can buy the parts at most ratshacks) and have that set off a buzzer/siren. Position the beam sensor pair within range of motion of her hand so all she needs to to is interrupt the beam with her fingertip.
Ratshack even used to sell a larger-scale version of this as a door entry bell. You placed the unit and a reflector on either side of a doorway and anytime someone walks through the beam a chime sounds. Most ratshacks had these set up and operating to alert the salespeople to incoming customers during off-hours.
You might be able to find a pre-made version of this device on a small scale for detecting cabinet openings, or as a small portable "hotel room alarm" but most of these kinds of devices will not use this mode of sensing. (most cabinet alarms sense the light pouring in from the room into the cabinet, and most hotel alarms hang on the doorknob and sense being rocked around with a mercury switch.)
-Matt
If the motion is that severaly limited, something simple would be a circuit that is completed by her putting a finger on top of two contacts -- maybe a millimeter away from where her finger is supposed to rest.
Or some lightweight convex surface with the contacts mounted underneath -- much lower resistance than a mechanical button or switch but less likely to go off accidentally. You could use the material from a small speaker dome and put conductive traces on the inside. Along with a cheap piezo buzzer and a 9V battery.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Would she be able to use a light switch panel that has the large, flat switch (as opposed to a regular light switch)?
Also, a sensitive motion detector? It might be able to pick up blinking or other movements she could make moving an object like a pencil.
How about a handicapped-helper dog?
Another idea is a button she could bite on that triggers a noisemaker.
Advice: I hope you find something. Be creative. Use functions of her body which are not affected by ALS, i.e. respiration or heart rate. If either vital signs drop or accelerate to a certain point, a simple breathing monitor or heart monitor would make noise.
you could work in some extra circuitry to make certian very quick brushes don't trigger the sound, but that's optional.
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Two wires/contact points on her fingertips, the wires go to the watch on her wrist, and set the watch alarm off when she touches her fingers together.
Synergy is your friend
Good suggestion about using a battery. I heard power outages aren't uncommon in the US. And anyway, you shouldn't run the risk, even is the power is extremely reliable.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
this is what came to my mind...
get one of the touchpad light switches. all they require is human contact to complete the circuit. No force required. Connect this to a FM transmitter that will send a signal to a device her husband can keep next to him to wake him up. The beauty of this is she can be anywhere within the transmission range and the husband can still be alerted. Plus they could have extra receivers if they wanted.
I hate to throw a wet blanket on good intentions, but have you considered the possible liability implications of what you are doing?
I work for a company that sold its biomedical division because of the horrendous liability issues associated with biomedical products. I'm not a lawyer, but I'd be surprised if you didn't have similar issues associated with this project. You might want to check on that before you give your friend your solution.
One small problem with IR is that if she covers the emmiter or detector her hand still gives off IR radiation and the switch may not close. Also, there's the problem of cooking the poor woman's hand from the IR LED if not tuned properly.
A simple photodetector could be put near a nightlight or an LED to trigger the switch. Radio Shack, among other electronics retailers, sells a project box the size of a matchbox. An LED and a Photodetector could be mounted on the outside of this with four wires (telco wire?) going to a seperate box holding the battery's, buzzer, and possibly a relay that keeps voltage from going to the LED except when the photo resistor is covered to conserve battery life.
There are already plenty of great ideas here, including a variation on the one I was to recommend. Looking at this from an engineering standpoint, I'll put forth the two premises that are foremost in my mind: A. The patient's lack of mobility persists in sleep; no tossing or turning. B. The alarm should be built as a failsafe; the alarm will be silent as long as the patient maintains effort to keep it silent.
Remember that a light detector works better at detecting the presence of light than it does at failing to detect the absence of light.
So, my variation would be based on the light sensor array. Place a reasonably bright light in front of a resonably sensitive detector. Set the system so the alarm goes off when the detector sees light. Place the patient's hand (or fingertip) over the light (apertured so that it is just barely completely covered). Slight motion of the hand (or finger) lets the light sneak past and the detector will trigger. The patient won't need to move much to trigger it, but false alarms should be rare since it is the patient's lack of mobility that necessitates the alarm.
Best of luck with whatever solutions you pursue, and I hope it aids your friend and her family.
Commercial houses don't make medical equipment like this. It's called life critical. All of the components, ALL of them -- capacitors, resistors, microprocessors, you name it -- go through extensive inspection and screening. MUCH more extensive than normal commercial flows. The manufacturers specifically forbid you to use their equipment in life critical applications without their consent.
If you think Radio Shack is using the same capacitors that are in a pacemaker, you need to buy a clue. Same manufacturer? maybe. Same processing, safeguards, screening, testing, paperwork, failure analysis including intentionally destroying certain parts to see where they fail their limits? not even close.
Please return to your mindless rants, jackass.
May I suggest that while Slashdot may enjoy playing "adaptive device technology developer", because it is kind of fun, you should absolutely do what the parent of this post suggested. This situation is too critical to use anything but proven technology. If you try to kludge something together and it fails, you may end up in a situation you will never forgive yourself for, not to mention anyone else who cares about this woman.
I myself kinda think the idea of biofeedback is neat... but this isn't the time to experiment. Go to the experts and do what they say. Neither you nor the rest of Slashdot put together can possibly match the experiences of the entire community built around supporting these people.
On a more prosaic note, I would be very deeply concerned about the potential legal liability of creating your own solution to this problem. You may find that your best friends are ir(?)rational enough to sue for damages if your homegrown device fails. (On reflection, perhaps that would be perfectly rational behavior, for some definitions of rational. Surprisingly deep philosophical question.)
Since her movement abilities are gradually being restricted to her eyes, it would be very logical to design something around the most mobile part of her body. My suggestion would be a motion detecting mechanism that responds to sudden repeated movements of the eyes, such as three rapid blinks, etc. As her ability to move any other body part is gradually lost, so will be her ability to use any device designed specifically for that region.
David
There's a small proublem with this idea, when in a deep sleep(non-rem) all you muscles tense, thus setting off the alarm. And as I read this question the alarm id for while she is sleeping and awakes with a proublem.
-Ben
(Yes I know my spelling is poor but it's 2 am and I've been up more than 36 hours)
---PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE---
"Now, where's the damn 'any' key?"