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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?"
If we are talking about a serious system here, you aren't going to be able to do this yourself. Just for starters, think about how complicated this would be if you decide to have a shower. You will have to deactivate the whole shooting match and then get it all back up and running again afterwards. Of course, if you slip in the shower, you're screwed. There are already solutions out there that you can sign up for. One that I have seen is a pendant you wear around your neck that has a button on it. One push, and your relatives are notified by phone. Or, fail to push the button on a regular basis and a phone call comes from the monitoring service, who can also dispatch 911, etc. Finally, at the risk of being harsh, if you truly believe you may die suddenly with no notice at any time, you seriously need to reconsider your current care arrangements. You do not strike me as qualifying to care for some with the needs you imply in your question. Please take this as honest advice, not a flame.
Carrying a full-blown cell phone is precisely what this bloke seems to expect- if you've found solutions that include that, perhaps you could share?
Frankly, the poster's situation sounds serious enough that a $20/month cell phone bill is the least of his worries.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Hmm, you could look at the water meter, and if they haven't used any water in a day, as long as they don't have any automatic waterering devices or leaking toilets, it would tell them that there was a problem. The automatic devices and leaks could probably be detected and compensated for with fuzzy logic. Apartments without water meters would have to have one installed, not a real big problem.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Talk to your doctor. You do not want a DIY solution when someone's life depends on it.
You may also want to look into a managed care facility. You may be able to get them to accept both you and your child so you could continue to care for the child.
if the dibility is such that life is at risk after one hour, why isn't the child in a care facility where they receive more than one person's care? Sometimes you think you're doing what's best for your children, but you're not.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
... if her medical needs weren't "significant enough that being alone for even an hour could be fatal for her." An hour is just too small of a window to accomplish anything useful without having so many false alarms that your family won't take the alerts seriously anymore. You really need to re-evaluate your living conditions.
http://outcampaign.org/
This seems to be a strange way to approach the problem. Your worry is that your child won't be able to live for long if you can't provide the proper care for her. Then, wouldn't it be better to give her a way of asking for care to be provided?
Assuming she's old enough, and not severely mentally disabled, this would seem to be the better option. After all, you could be perfectly alive and still be in a situation where you can't get to her fast enough.
I know I'm responding to a troll, but this brings up a serious point. Millions of people are walking around (and reproducing) who by all rights of nature should be dead. Are we weakening ourselves as a species? I think so...
Erm, why is it that half of the time that someone asks a serious question, a moderator assumes it's a troll? Did you stop to think, "Maybe the person who posted this is a computer nerd who suffers from depression or bipolar disorder and self-injures as a way of relieving emotional tension. Perhaps he wants to find out if he's alone in being a self-injuring computer nerd?"
Please, if you're going to moderate, do your homework. Make sure you understand the point of view you are raising or lowering. There's no way to tell if someone is joking, pleading, inflaming, pontificating, or any other such affect. Before you moderate, consider all possible tones-of-voice which could accompany that comment, and the didactic, conversational, and philosophical consequences of elevating or suppressing that particular opinion. For example: if this very comment were to be marked "insightful," someone reading it will think I meant quite a different thing than if this comment were to be marked "flamebait."
Moderators ought to moderate, not bias nor interest.
they have some astoundingly well trained, carefully bred and intuitively intelligent real dog brand watchdogs out there now, will help the child from doing anything too stupid. And even save the day, say the parent got incapacitated, kid started a fire, the dog would drag her outside (given a dog switch on the door on the inside) and stuff like that. Also good therapy for any kid. All kids need a doggie,unless they are so allergic that this is impossible, in said case, get a standard poodle, almost allergy proof for people who are normally allergic to dogs. They are smart too, and you don't have to get them lion clipped, they look just fine with an over all neat and even clip.
Some things just can't be done alone. Use the internet to find peope in your region who have similar problems and help them help you. Not only wil someone be looking in on you but they will no exactly what you are going through and know how to care for your child in an emergency. Ask for help and give some back, technology is not the solution for every human problem and is best applied when it works in conjunction with people.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Based on the information we're given, I think the only compassionate answer is "don't do this yourself." If a person's life depends on the reliability of this solution, trying to come up with a clever hack is just plain irresponsible. In that case, you really need to buy a tested off-the-shelf solution.
There's this bluetooth enabled Alive Heart Monitor
Great! Everytime he walks by a WAP or microwave, emergency services will get a call saying he's dying.
Perhaps a more robust communication method might be warranted here?
Life is too short to proofread.
Dead-mans switch on the toilet flusher? Surely most elderly people would use this every day (and night).
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Obviously, there is a way to use everything to kill people. /. is not the place where someone would go for advice when trying to kill other people. It's too easily traceable, and might warn the victims, without providing anything special that couldn't be aquired through a more traditional channel.
The issue is that slashdot posts are not the output of the brightest minds in the world, just the average knowledge of an engineer. And most people who want to kill others in big quantities, can hire an engineer, or have on of them in their organization.
I think we should safely think that