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How Can I Build a Portable "Dead-Man's" Switch?
An anonymous reader asks: "I'm a widower caring for my very disabled child. I have family who check in on me often, but not reliably, and not every day. How can I rig up a 'dead-man's switch' that will alert family or emergency services should something happen to me, so that my child can be cared for? Her medical needs are significant enough that being alone for even an hour could be fatal for her. We do occasionally get out of the house, so a GPS type cellphone and a heart-rate monitor watch would seem to be the ticket, but how to link the two and get the desired dialing behaviour?"
There's this bluetooth enabled Alive Heart Monitor that apparently works with GPS, and with a PDA/smartphone or a server. You'd probably need to write (or hire someone to write) an application to use the data for the actual contacting other people in case of x part, but the hardware seems to exist for what you want to do.
Have you considered a medic alert bracelet for the times when you're out? Or are you in remote, non-populated areas?
May I suggest you visit a medical store? Get a device like those made for hospitals or old folks. Probably easier than posting to slashdot.
Being disabled and prone to dangerous falls myself, I know this sentiment all to well. Needless to say, I've had difficulty finding something that would not only work within my home, but anywhere I go, without needing to carry a full-blown cell-phone.
Something like a human-based form of OnStar, but with a heart/lung monitor and an accelerometer/impact sensor (to detect the speed and severity of a fall).
8==8 Bones 8==8
I saw an interesting article in a Japanese newspaper, it relies upon a relatively unique cultural circumstance, but I think you'll be inspired to think of how it can be adapted. The device was invented for one guy's family, but after it got some writeups in the newspapers, the idea was so popular that it went into production, and now lots of people have them.
There are many elderly Japanese people who live alone, some are deaf and can't use the phone, etc. so it's hard to get a way to check in on them to see if they're still alive. But almost every home has a hot-pot, an insulated pot with an electric heater used to keep water near the boiling point, to make tea every day. So some clever guy put a sensor in the hot-pot, if nobody picks it up within a day, it phones a preprogrammed number to alert someone to check in on them. Yeah, these people drink a lot of tea, it was the only thing they could think of that elderly people did EVERY day.
Of course this only checks in once a day, but you could probably think of other ways to adapt this idea.
Friends, lots of them.
Seriously.
If you have this load as a caregiver, just having people around, helping and having someone to kvetch with is not just a good idea, but critical, if only for your own emotional health.
There are other people in the same boat, so perhaps finding or forming a community might be the way to go. Something less collective then a commune, but a structure like http://www.bruderhof.com/ (if christian). Equivalent communities exist in other religious traditions, as well as the religious (monks, nuns and others)associated with a belief structure.
Technolocial measures sound neat, but they have so many points of failure compounded by the people that have to be around to insure that they don't fail, that I would be suspicious of the lot. Not that I feel that way, but I would adopt that attitude by policy.
Consider the call clearing center that an alarm panel calls into: the UL standard calls for redundant systems that fail safe, two levels of backup power generation, duplicated sites, alarm receivers that fail busy so calls can get through, requirement for manual control, full data logging, crisis triage, etc.
A full technology solution is suspect, a hybrid system is probably better, and you have the adventure of searching out the real players from the fakes. Look to the service providers that a hospital might use.
And look carefully at response time: under disaster conditions it probably will swing out past your hour requirement.
Oh, you have to concern yourself with the other side: Are your critical systems on backup power? UPS and autostart generators? Tested each week?
There is a very good reason why the backup batteries in the telcos are usually glass lined lead-acid submarine batteries that (usually) power diesel boats. I don't think the cable co's are quite there yet. Just a guess.
Feel free to email me if required - there are a lot of details I don't know, and a phone call might be needed.
Don't be afraid of the complexity, a few minutes with some brainstorming buddies can cut that down to size. The legwork is a different story!
Best of luck!
This is progress?