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Ask Slashdot: Panic Button a Very Young Child Can Use
First time accepted submitter Zotonian writes My wife is epileptic. Her seizures have been well controlled by medication until recently. My concern is that we have a toddler and infant at home. I've set up cameras so I can monitor the house, but I'm looking for a solution that my 2 year old daughter can hit a button to tell me to look at them if necessary. Most of the options I'm finding off the shelf notify first responders and I'm concerned of the number of false positives a toddler might initiate. Other solutions like cellphones or wearables for kids are too overloaded with unnecessary options like GPS, phone, games, etc. I'd rather have a simple 'push button' solution I can wire into my router that would send me a text or chat message that alerts me to check the cameras. Then if there is an actually emergency I can take the steps from there. I'm looking for cheap and simple. Any suggestions from the Slashdot community?
How about a smartwatch for the wife. Make a little app the detects erratic arm movements and sends you a text message from her phone when that happens. Then you check in on the camera .
This product may be what you are looking for
http://bt.tn/
A big red button connected to the net that can do whatever you want
http://www.instructables.com/id/Desk-Panic-Button/?ALLSTEPS
Nobody on these forums can offer you legal advice but what you're asking sounds like a good way to get your kid taken away.
Get a hub and a door/window sensor or the starter kit. Put the door / window sensor on a cabinet door and tell your daughter to open that door if mommy has a problem (you could put a teddy bear or something in there that she should take to mommy ONLY if mommy is having issues). Then, using the smart app, you can have that alert you anytime the cabinet is opened. Should be less than $150 or so and now you have the start of home automation as well.
You're asking for a kind of button that will make it possible to rely upon a 2-year-old child as a caretaker. This is not a technology problem, and unless someone finds a way to accelerate human development of children to an alarming rate, it's not a solvable one either. And I have to say, what you're proposing seems like an inherently risky situation...to your wife and child both. Your wife runs the risk of your not being alerted, and I can't even guess what it would do to a child to have that kind of responsibility, especially if she doesn't hit the button for whatever reason, and ends up haunted by that for the rest of your life.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
I assumed he is a good man but a shitty engineer, so he asked here for help from people who are good engineers but shitty human beings.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Yeah, I have a suggestion. Chill the fuck out. Watch your 2 year old, and when he/she's asleep, don't worry about it.
While you can probably delay the situations with the highest risk factors (e.g. baby's bath time) until both parents are home, there's a lot of things that potentially could go wrong while unattended. For example, A sudden onset seizure could cause the wife to drop the baby, or hit her own head on the coffee table, or who knows what else. Having a way for the 2 year old to call for help on her own in such situations could make a tremendous difference
This was a reasonable question looking for help mitigating very real risks -- don't be a dick about it.
That said: perhaps the easiest way would be to have a very basic speaker phone set up somewhere with a one-push button to actually CALL dad in case of emergency. A benefit of that over a silent email/sms/whatever setup is that it could give the 2-year old instant feedback that help is coming if there really is a problem, and depending on the verbal skills of the kid dad can save precious time as well: "mom fell and isn't moving!" vs. wasting time to try to remotely view your cameras first and see what happened.
(Although a possible downside is that she may just start hitting it anytime she wants to talk to dad during office hours)
I am guessing that he did not look very hard...
http://www.amazon.com/LG-Veriz...
first hit after googleing "Cellphone for a small child"
a child can easily learn that press 1 for daddy, 2 for mommy, 3 for grandma and if mommy needs help press the big red hand and tell the lady on the line our address.
Otherwise for his wife there are a TON of systems that are panic buttons designed for people who have siezures.
So, what does the question asker have against all the existing options?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
An epilepsy service dog can be trained to activate an alarm, such as LifeLine. It will also position itself between her and the toddler so the toddler doesn't get hurt. Just the knowledge that the dog CAN do this for her will lower everyone's stress levels.
A lot more dependable than some cobbled-together system that relies on a toddler, and that could lead to ugly questions about negligence. While the dogs are expensive, there are organizations that pay for the training.
Next time, why not ask her doctor or the doctor's secretary?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
It's very difficult having a spouse with a chronic illness. (I know.) Even harder when you have children.
As much as it sucks, have her in child care as much as possible. Yes, it's horrifically expensive, it's not ideal, it's not what you envisioned (I assume, as much as you want to let her stay home with mom). But it makes sense.
If it's your wife that you are primarily worried about, then you need to figure out what can help her. Can a neighbor check on her fairly frequently? Another family member? Also, I've seen devices advertised (primarily to elderly) which claim to be able to detect falls.
For both - child and wife - check with local social workers about what is available. You may be eligible for subsidized child care due to the situation. Your wife may be eligible for some kinds of help.
Hang in there, and don't be ashamed to reach out for help.
Your epileptic wife is having attacks, and you want a TWO year old to be not only alone in that situation, but responsible for a panic button? Dude, you are sick and need to get a frickin clue. Fast! Someone should seriously turn you in for child endangerment bordering on abuse!
Yeah, I honestly had to consider whether or not this was an early April fools gag...
You seem to have misread his situation, it's not that he *wants* that situation, it's a situation he wants to avoid. Yet, he also wants to prepare for it.
There are many home automation systems out there that could serve this up with a wireless switch or a panic button. I have a Vera as well as the parent poster, and it would work perfectly for this task. In addition to text and email, you can also hook up a Prowl notification to be delivered as an alert to your phone.
A well-connected home would give you another option. Instead of relying strictly on the panic button or your toddler's response, you could ask your wife to use the home automation system at least once an hour (or so.) You could then configure it to trigger a notification if no light switches or TV remote buttons are activated, or if no doors are opened or closed during that time. Give her a way to disable it when she sets the alarm clock for a nap, or leaves home for a walk in the park, or whatever. Perhaps after 55 minutes elapse, you could turn on the lights or ring a doorbell to remind her to check in. The idea is similar to the dead man's switch railroad engine cabs have, where the engineer has to press a button or adjust a control every minute to prove he's still awake.
Of course, this might be too intrusive an approach and she may not be interested in this kind of monitoring, or you might think that a tolerable response time for your wife is too long for you to react, but it also might be a backup option that suits both of you.
John
Clearly OP has a less than ideal situation, but additional data vectors (child or not) are always good. 24x7 at home nursing care is prohibitively expensive to all but the five richest kings on earth. Do you have a constructive solution?
Mod parent troll or flame bait.
/* MAGIC THEATRE
ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
MADMEN ONLY */
Sounds like you always assume the best in people and can't see the whole equation played out. Optimism is good, but in this case there is a 2 year old in the equation that seems to be constantly overlooked in this thread. Web cams don't make good baby sitters, in fact I'd be curious to know if he would be guilty of a crime if something was to happen to his wife given he knew the current medial needs of her.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
You are essentially asking for something that would allow you to make your kid the caretaker of your wife.
I'm seeing lots of people saying this, but I don't see it.
I would think this would be a good thing for the child to know and have something to do if this happens. I'd imagine a two year-old watching Mommy convulsing on the floor and having no idea what to do would be far more traumatizing than knowing that she should immediately go press the big purple button and then wait by the phone for Daddy to call her (which he will do as soon as he's called 911).
By the way, most of the issues with "parentification" are when the child is the sole caregiver. Obviously, she isn't--her father is also involved. Also, Mommy isn't an invalid--she's probably still making lunches and doing other things. So this is more for the possible case where Mommy collapses.
As for the concern about your child feeling responsible, that's mostly going to be based on how it's presented to the child. Personally, I wouldn't rely on the child being the only alarm. That much, I do agree with. Not so much that a child is somehow unable to give the alarm but that the child may be absorbed in something else and miss things as well.
I'd also add a wrist-mounted accelerometer or something like that which would send the same signal as the big purple button if his wife were to start flailing her arms around.
I'm really really concerned that the people on here don't give their kids any kind of emergency training.
By giving your child a small amount of responsibility you are NOT turning them into primary care givers or causing parentification.
My 4 year old knows how to call the police, ambulance and fire service. She knows which one to call and when. She knows how to unlock my wife's and my mobile and how to dial 000. She knows that it might happen that we are hurt and we can't do it and she knows she will never ever get in trouble if she calls when it wasn't needed. What's more is we have practised it.
For a 2 year old something as complex as explaining a situation to dispatch would probably be too much. But knowing to hit the big red button if mum collapses is not.
True. And a few other things.
People keep mentioning. "Why don't you have the kid run next door to the neighbor and get them to get help?" Last time I checked, if they're smart (and independent) enough to go next door for help, they're more than capable of hitting a panic button. Secondly, hitting a panic button, dad checking the cameras, and dad reacting, is all probably going to happen a lot faster than kid running next door, kid ringing door bell, talking to neighbor, neighbor coming over, neighbor deciding what to do.
On the same token, the panic button ->dad ->calls neighbour chain would likely get the nearest adult to the scene a lot faster than having the kid heading outside. Safer, too. Much better to have the kid inside with an epileptic than outside running around in a panic. What if the nearest "friendly" house is their friend's house across the street? In a panic the kid's not going to be looking both ways.
From the sounds of things, his wife is perfectly capable of taking care of things 95% of the time. If she was having daily seizures, he probably wouldn't be leaving the house. You don't need live-in care for something that may well only happen once a week or less. Instead of viewing this as an attempt at delegating all caretaking responsibility to the kid, think of it as establishing multiple fail-safes.
We know he's got bunch of cameras that he watches on a regular basis (but not continuous). Given that he's technically inclined, and that, from what I gather, many people with epileptic seizures can recognize onset symptoms, (not all sufferers, definitely not all the time, but at least sometimes) there's probably decent chances that they've rigged up something that the mother could use herself. Maybe just a speed dial, but possibly other things. If not, then the various ideas of using exercise bands and accelerometers might make a very good layer of redundancy there, too.
Personally, the idea of having a sensor-rigged cupboard with a big stuffed animal in it, and telling the kid to take mom the stuffed animal when she's in trouble sounds like a great idea too. Great padding to have between an epileptic and any potentially hard surfaces, although unlikely a kid would be placing it optimally.
Frankly, giving one's kid a panic button that sends a message to Dad seems like a really good thing to have, no matter what the situation at home is. Honestly, it isn't exactly that rare of an occurrence for the sole responsible adult at home to have some kind of accident where it would be *very* useful for the kid to have some way of summoning a responsible 3rd party, whether it be a neighbour or relative or whatever.
Lastly, just because he hasn't laid out every last precaution and detail of his family's life is no reason to assume that they're being negligent, that she's having daily severe seizures, or that they're pinning all their hopes of safety on the kid. We don't need to know all that. He simply asked for advice on a single, specific solution to a specific element of his situation. Let's help him out on that, shall we?
Some quick links that a google search turned up:
First one is an instructables video, the last two are commercial options, one for phone software, the second for an actual device.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Desk-Panic-Button/
http://www.blacklinesafety.com/solutions/loner-mobile/
https://www.alarmgrid.com/products/honeywell-5802wxt
Z
If you worked a bit harder than a cursory glance you would find things like this: The Epilepsy Foundation of Northern California is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization leading the fight to stop seizures, find a cure and overcome the challenges created by epilepsy.
We direct information, resources and support toward the over 140,000 Northern Californians living with epilepsy.
infant and 2 year old != "small children" by any rational definition.
Do they provide in home assistance? I don't know, GP asked me to find "one" site for support. I found that in a quick Google Search. I don't have epilepsy so have never had to search for their services. If you really care about TFA and are not just trolling, why not call them and see? Oh, I know.. you can't even read the information box in a web site so I'd be expecting miracles. It's much easier to troll and claim impossible
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I read that as: there was probably a recent event that now causes him to doubt or worry that the condition might not be fully under control.
So it could be a useful thing to have a panic button available to the child, but surely there should be a panic button available to the wife as well.
Also, my greatest concern would be that the panic button fail, so it should be quite reliable and not solely dependent on an internet connection.
I'm not sure why the author thinks it should not contact first responders.
I say rubbish.... the buttons should set off an alarm, and a monitoring company should attempt to make immediate contact with the wife; if no response, then start making a phone call to all the emergency contacts.
I had epilepsy for 30 years, about one seizure every two weeks, before finally getting brain surgery last year. The seizures were deeply hallucinogenic, physically severe, often lasted 10-20 minutes, and they left me with a huge hangover; afterwards I had to sleep about 12-18 hours in one go, maybe wake up for maybe four hours, then go back to sleep for another 12-18 hour stretch. I was like my brain was rebooting like Windows after a blue screen. If I wasn't able to sleep, I would become really sick, get intense migraines, and start throwing up, and recovery took several days longer.
A big problem was people instantly making 911 calls. I was routinely being dragged off to an ER all the time, waking up in one at least once a month. They all knew me there, and realized after a while what the deal was, so I would be wheeled into a corner and left behind a curtain while they tended to more serious cases. I had to wait there for hours staring up at fluorescent lights and struggling to keep from vomiting and choking to death (since they liked to strap me on the bed face up). It usually took six to ten hours to get out of there- I had to wait for the lab to finish their ritual of drug assays for PCP, LSD, THC, cocaine, methamphetamine, and all kinds of other shit that they knew were going to come back negative. And this was before the ACA, so with a huge preexisting condition I couldn't get insurance from anybody, and had to pay out of pocket costs for meds which I couldn't afford half the time because this shit made it hard to get a job in the first place. When seizures came, I had about ten second warning from a visual aura. If I was outside I would quickly jump underneath nearby bushes or hide behind parked cars just so no one would see me and call the ER. I would wake up and stagger home bleeding, getting lost, and trying to stay out of sight. I did have a bracelet that said DO NOT CALL 911, along with my wife's number, but no one ever took it seriously. I wanted her to know so she could come pick me up, but I always wound up in the jaws of an ER instead.
Don't assume this guy and his wife want a 2 year old calling 911. That may be the last thing they need. I can see why he would want to know, right away. He's lived with her and is going to be better equipped to handle her than the paramedics will. if they can't get any clues from a toddler, the emergency responders have to figure out what's going on themselves, and that makes it a painful mess. There isn't a lot that an ER can do with a seizure anyway except strap the person down so they don't thrash around and get bruises. There's always the possibility of status epilepticus (which I've had many times) but you should wait until a seizure lasts for more than five minutes. They look scary, maybe like the person is dying, and of course there's the danger of thrashing around and hitting things. But in general a seizure doesn't do any lasting damage to the brain.
You... do know that epileptic seizures are in most cases non fatal. As in the initial position is most important. It happens suddenly, when you hit a chair, table, whatever, you could get (seriously) injured. Everything after that depends very much on the length of the seizure and how quickly one regains consciousness. You simply can not call the hospital every time it happens. I am an emergency response officer (damn that sounds cocky in English) and first rule during an epileptic seizure is when you recognize it (the person should make it known they are epileptic) and help them to the ground. If you have the time push away anything that might hurt them (sharp objects, furniture). Ideally you drag them to a 3 meter radius free spot. Remember though. You will probably will be to late in most cases. And just FORGET anything about trying to stop the shaking or help someone in anyway (NO you do not force ANYTHING in to their mouths. The force of the bite is so great they can shatter teeth or the object you embed adding shrapnel of debris to the whole mix). This is a neurological condition that either stops by itself or can be negated with special medicine only a doctor can prescribe (dependent on the type of epilepsy) and carried by the person so they can instruct people to help them out with this. The most important is the aftermath. - If it is the first time and it is an unknown condition to this person: ambulance or at least off to the hospital with them. - If shaking takes more then 10 minutes or the person does not regain conscious within that time period. Call the ambulance (just in case). - Check if the person is breathing. Which I hopefully don't need to explain why and what you need to do. Everyone even a toddler can just raise the 'I think something is wrong' alarm. The point is; not a whole lot of things can accurately trigger on a seizure. As far as I know you heart rhythm doesn't even have to be affected. And the 'flailing' can't easily be found by the watch. If you are laying on your arm while having the seizure that's the only limb that will not move. While under normal circumstances you might flick your wrist and set off an alarm. People in your neighborhood are your best friend. Always, period. When you wake up you feel like you walked the marathon. Everything hurts, you feel disoriented (in most cases) and are prone to feel 'alien' as you have been 'gone' for X minutes. Yes I think a button is the right choice for given use case.
And in my neighbourhood you are not allowed to have wireless dogs running around.
-- Make America hate again!
So what are you saying -- epileptic people are broken subhumans and it's irresponsible for them to try to live independently? It's one thing to ban them from driving or operating heavy machinery, it's another to suggest that they can't bring up their own children.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
tags or usetags for new lines.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
I'm sure a local church would have people that may volunteer,
No there aren't. Most churches are stretched thin as it is. Very few could provide in home personnel for 40+ hours a week to someone who's dying. Even fewer even offer daycare facilities, much less in-home daycare.
I'm sure there are foundations he could apply for assistance with
Even the poor and seriously ill have trouble finding anyone to provide them care in this country. The few non-profits that offer this kind of assistance are already overwhelmed. They can't provide enough care for the seriously ill poor, much less for a middle-class guy whose wife has occasional epileptic attacks.
how about a Ou pair or exchange student?
Even at minimum wage for 40 hours week--that's about $1,200 a month. Pretty major cost for someone whose spouse already isn't working. Even I couldn't afford that easily, and I make significantly more than most.
Going on Government aid
WTF government aid are you TALKING about? You think the government provides free full-time nanny service for epileptics? Hell, they don't even provide free drugs for them.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.