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How Can I Build a Portable "Dead-Man's" Switch?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the in-the-event-of-death dept.

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?"

2 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. Alive Heart Monitor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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?

  2. The Japanese have done this. by sakusha · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.