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Engineer Develops Sonar Alarm System To Monitor Kids In the Pool (newatlas.com)
British electrical engineer John Barstead created a sonar alarm system that will warn parents or nearby sunbathers if a small child has accidentally fallen into a pool. The Dolphin Alarm, as it is called, is currently raising production funds on Kickstarter. New Atlas explains how it works: When small children who have no business going into the pool on their own are out playing near it, they wear a special wristband. If they should fall in, the wristband will generate a three-tone sonar signal as soon as it's immersed in the water. That signal will be detected by a hydrophone contained within a receiver unit that floats in the pool. When that happens, the unit will emit a 131-decibel alarm. It will also transmit an alert to an indoor remote unit located up to 150 m away (170 ft), which will likewise sound an alarm of its own. While there are other child-in-the-pool alarms, most of them are wave-activated and have to be shut off when other people are using the pool.
Now we no longer need to pay any attention to our kids when they're near a swimming pool. We have technology to do it for us!
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Just use the standard sonar signature of the pool and alarm if it changes.
The wristband is the flaw. A kid who isn't supposed to go into the pool isn't going to wear their special wristband, especially if it isn't their pool.
If it depends on the kid wearing a "water activated" wristband of some sort, it's a bit of a non-starter. The kid learns first that if he drags his arm through the water, big excitement ensues. Next he learns that if he takes the wristband off and throws it in the pool, even greater amusement ensues. Finally, the parents get rid of the thing out of irritation.
That is all.
If the problem is unsupervised children falling into a pool, the solution is a fence.
After several minutes thought I find it rather hard to figure out the market for this product:
* It requires modification of the pool environment, but is inferior to wave based child detection systems because it also requires,
* Modification of the child via a large battery powered wrist strap, but is inferior to a leash because they can still fall in pools
It also looks suspiciously like vapourwear:
* no examples of it in operation
* all depictions of the prototype are actually renders
* any time the product is depicted "in use" it is a still photo with photoshop modifications
I would think a wave-activated device, coupled with a security camera and some sort of mobile or web app, would be great (if I had a pool, which I don’t). It would work for neighborhood kids, which this wouldn’t. And, if I were away from the house, I could still call for emergency responders were it warranted.
This new “invention” seems like something we could’ve had in the 1960s. The only reason it’s even here is probably the word “KickStarter”. Hey, @whipslash, please consider adding the ability to filter out KickStarter stories, the way we can other subjects.
#DeleteChrome
Shock Collars and invisible fencing should protect your children quite nicely. And provide a handy guide for your robotic mower, which totally would never kill people instead of cutting grass. /s
A much better idea would be a to have adults wear the sonar device to act as an inhibit for a wave based alarm sensor.
Unless the wrist band falls off
or It's battery goes flat
or it gets damaged
or someone forgets to put it on
or it gets dirty and the ultrasonic transducer doesn't make a sound
or it gets dirty and the water detector doesn't trigger
or the detection microphone is fouled
or the floating detectors battery goes flat
There is already a solution for this problem. You can buy a system that detects disturbances in the water. They automatically arm themselves when the water is calm, you temporarily disarm it when you use the pool and it rearms automatically then you stop disturbing the water.
When something disturbs the water, like a child falling in, an alarm is triggered.
They're designed by real engineers to solve this specific problem as an alternative for pool fencing where it's legal or in addition to it as extra protection.
They're designed to protect all kids, not just the ones you remembered to attach a wristband to.
I fail to see a market for this and I hope no one gets lulled into a false sense of security by it.
It really inspires confidence in a safety product when the website describing its operation says "When the wrist band makes contact with water the transmitter sends an acoustic signal to the pool alarm which emits a loud penetrating"
Penetrating what? Tentacle to rescue your drowning child?
It's not even an HTML rendering issue, it's an image.
They also feel the need to state "WRISTBAND TRANSMITTER - The Wristband is worn on the wrist" Where else do you wear a wristband?
And bathing together with them until they can swim.
Sometimes tech solves problems that don't exist. At least not for people with common sense.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Interesting idea, but pool guarding systems based only on video is pretty common. Like PoolView, SwimEye, AngelEye among others. It has existed for many years. As a matter of fact, my brother used to code for one of these systems. It's all underwater video monitoring with pattern detection and works fairly well.
The only scenario where I could see this sonar-version would be practical is in Hotel resorts or other closed areas where visiting kids are given this wristband and then left to roam the premises unattended. Going for private households might be the angle required for Kickstarter, but all in all this seems like a product more suited for the business market, IMHO.