Providing Security and Safety for an Autistic Child?

JHDrexler asks: "I have read Slashdot for several years and often find topics/posts about security to be especially interesting, enlightening, educational, and sometimes entertaining. I consider myself to be fairly well educated and experienced when dealing with and enforcing security. But the situation that I am forced to deal with is, at its core, the basic fundamental reason for the requirement of security, but at such an unbelievable extreme that it has perplexed everyone that I have asked for assistance. While most security systems are designed to keep the un-trusted out. My application requires keeping the un-trusted out, while also keeping the un-trusted in and robust enough that the trusted users cannot break it." JHDrexler has three children, one of whom is autistic and tends to get into trouble. Could some form of system be developed (on a budget) that would be easy to use for the non-autistic children, yet restrictive enough to keep the autistic child from getting out, and possibly harming himself?

"Here is the issue. I have three children and a very loving, hard-working wife at home. My oldest child is a nine-year-old girl, and then I have my eight-year-old Autistic son, and then my five-year-old son. The eight-year-old presents the challenge. If you can imagine a two-year-old mentality in an eight-year-old body then you will begin to understand the issues that we face. This child is intelligent and determined, but he doesn't talk and he doesn't understand us when we talk to him. He doesn't understand fear and he doesn't understand pain. I have seen him play in the snow for twenty minutes, barefoot before we realized he had gotten out of the house. His only complaint was that we made him come back into the house to warm him up. The security in my house needs to be done in such a way that my nine and five-year-old can get in and out, without compromising the security in such a way that the eight-year-old can get out. I also need to do this on my own. Our efforts to get assistance from our local government agencies have failed.

We have tried chains, but he just unlatches them. We have tried keys but the kids (nine- and five-year-olds) either leave them where he can reach them, or they lose them when they need to use them. We have tried keypads, but he ate the buttons off of the first one that we bought. The new one had plastic buttons but after two weeks we found that he would look over the five-year-old's shoulder and read the code as he punched it in. The other two kids mean well and they understand, but let's face it, they are typical users. If the security is too hard to deal with, they won't. They won't close the door if they have to find a key to open it again. Besides, these kids need a life too and I cannot put the responsibility of the Autistic child's safety on these kids. It's too great of a burden and they are just kids. I need a solution that is transparent enough that they can live with it and robust enough that he can't break it. The keypads worked great but are just too easy for the Autistic kid to defeat.

I have looked into biometrics but everything that I have found only locks one direction and was expensive. I need something that will lock in both directions and can be done with less then two weeks pay. I am really hoping that someone here will have a creative, effective, and realistic solution that I can get running in a reasonable amount of time. My wife is pulling her hair out and will have a nervous breakdown soon if something doesn't happen.

I sincerely thank you for your time, your efforts and your ideas."

Comments

Some factors make this problem easier.

[DeadSea]

You only have to be able to tell the difference between five people. That should make any system easier if you want to do it yourself. If you use biometrics it shouldn't be that complicated to tell the difference between 5 people. The fact that the autistic kid is the middle kid makes it more challenging though.

Specifically, I'm thinking of the stuff my high school chemistry teacher rigged up. He was a very bright guy, and had a very limited budget. He found ways to rig up cheap versions of very expensive scientific equipment. He usually did so with parts from Radio Shack and old computers that the computer lab was throwing out.

I would suggest getting an led, and a detector, having everybody in your family put their finger in between and see how much light each transmits. You would have to find a way to disable access for one while allowing access for four. If the differences are great enough, that would work. Just have everybody in your family stick their finger in a hole. You might want to work with pinky fingers so there is only one finger that will fit.

How about a scale on each side of the door? It would be easy to defeat for a regular person, but I'm not so sure for an 8 year old with autism. Again, you only have 5 people to worry about, not a lot more.

exit safety

[battjt]

In case of a fire or some other emergency, a stranger to the building needs to be able to exit.

Joe

Re:Reading Ability

[Garfunkel]

the other thing to remember in all of this is fire codes. You have to have a failsafe built in so that if the smoke detector goes off, or whatever, it automagically unlocks the door. What a tragedy it would be to have this thing so secure that people can't get out in case of an emergency, including the autistic child.

Image recognition software + Scanner

[BurritoJ]

Perhaps combining a computer with image recognition software and a scanner could be used. The scanner could be contained in a box with a hole just big enough for a hand and fore-arm. The image recognition software could be trained to recognize a unique hand shadow made by the 5 or 9 year old, which even if the 8 year old learned the gesture, his hand shadow would hopefully by sufficiently different to disallow his access. This system could be rekeyed frequently to allow for growth, 'cracked' keys, etc.

Here is a similar system applied to controlling a cat door. LINK

Joe

Instead of locks, how about noise?

[splattertrousers]

How about making all the exterior doors beep loudly when they are opened? That way, the adults in the house will at least know when doors are being opened. You could probably do that yourself with simple parts from Radio Shack.

You could go a step further, and attach some sort of biometric device to the main doors that disables the sound temporarily if the fingerprint or voiceprint matches. You wouldn't need the device on each side of the door, but it wouldn't hurt.

Hooking a biometric device to a buzzer sounds a lot easier and safer than hooking it to a lock. You might be able to find one that stands alone and doesn't need to be hooked up to a computer. Or, you might be able to hide a small, old computer near the main door and use a computer-connected fingerprint scanner or something. Then you'd have to figure out how to get the computer to disable the buzzer, but that shouldn't be too tricky.

Re:Sensors?

[cybermace5]

No, the RFID tags are much less complicated than the ankle bracelet.

There are several problems, though. A detector must be placed at every possible exit point, rather than a radius-based system. Also, the RFID tag has no way of triggering an alert if it is tampered with.

Maybe guarding one or two entrances is ok, until the child figures out how to climb out of a window. The ankle bracelet system works well for actual house arrest cases; they don't use RFID tags.

RF is also too easy to defeat: tinfoil. My RF passcard for work used to set off store alarms, until one of the stores gave me a "Schlage Shield" (piece of tinfoil covered in paper). The autistic child may not actually think of wrapping their RFID bracelet in tinfoil to get past the alarm, but this could happen accidentally; foil-lined potato chip bags, or anything metallic like a watch or pie plate could shield the RF tag. An active bracelet would trigger if communication is interrupted.