Home Alone (Home Monitoring the Independent Elderly)

Home Alone Monitor System

Goals

Home monitoring and automation has so far failed us. It is much too expensive and tend to be used exclusively by wealthy techies (for multimedia, etc) and X10 automation geeks (folks who just like messing around).

While everyone could/should afford a Home monitoring system (automation is a different beast -- I’ll discuss this later), who would benefit the most?  I think that the expanding “independent elderly” demographic is prime here. Not so much for their own purposes but to allow the children or grandchildren to keep an “eye” on their house to make sure that they are okay.  Has the stove been left on?  Is Grandma up and about?  Did she make it to her bed last night?  Has someone been ringing the door? Has the patio door been left open at night? Is the basement flooding? Is the house too warm?  Too cold? Has a window been left open?

Current solutions are too cost prohibitive and most don’t focus on the Independent Elderly.

They also use old, proprietary, non-internet saavy technology.

I propose Bluetooth LE.  It is most likely the future for low power consumption sensor nodes.

The prototype will use X10 (due to immediate availability) and wired USB solutions (temperature monitoring, etc).

For the purpose of this document/post, I refer to the independent elderly person as IE and the recipient of logs and alerts as the PC (primary caretaker).

My goals are:

2. Affordable ($10-20 per sensor, $200 base station)
3. Internet/Cloud ready (collect, log, view and distribute data)
1. Smart phone accessible
2. Notifications via email, custom smart phone app, etc
3. Web browsing of collected data
4. Zero interface once installed/callibrated
5. Non-intrusive (avoid “Big Brother” feel)
6. Open source protocol and software
1. For the tinkerer/hacker it means... FREE!
2. The value is in the backend web service subscription
1. Not open source
3. Get wider adoption and invigorate sensor market
7. Bluetooth LE based wireless sensors
1. 1+ year battery life
1. Wearable “panic/help” button

Home Automation?

No. This is not a home automation system.

Differences between Home Alone and home automation systems:

1. Home Alone is targeted toward the Independent Elderly (IE)
1. Very focused goals
2. Home Alone is meant to be inexpensive (not for the high tech wealthy)
3. Home Alone requires no buy into proprietary hardware/software
1. Compared with other free monitoring systems, Home Alone is meant to be reliable and stable

Features

• Monitor “live alone at home” elderly family member with tiny non-intrusive sensors and get notifications of how they are doing!
• Small (book sized) base station that can be placed in kitchen
• No system interaction required by elderly family member (referred to henceforth as just ‘member’) and only log/alert reading by ‘listener’.
• Non-intrusive... don’t interfere with member’s daily life
• Mostly monitoring
• Low sense of “Big Brother”
• Don’t overlap/interfere with security systems, entertainment systems, etc.
• Reliable
• Uses same technology and techniques that is used for mission critical embedded and cloud systems
• Inexpensive
• Cheap sensors (target: ~$10-25 per sensor)
• Will need to build sensors until market catches up
• Total base equipment cost (5-10 sensors + base station) < $600
• Cloud server instance
• Sensor Ideas
• Stove heat/smoke sensor -- has stove burner been left on for unusual duration?
• Check for motion in the kitchen... is someone there attending stove?
• Log for "end of day" summary notification
• Immediate notify listener
• Bedroom monitor -- Has the IE gone to bed? Slept late? Too sick to get up?
• Log for "end of day" summary notification
• Immediate notify PC
• Room monitor -- Motion detection to tell how much the IE is moving around
• Log for "end of day" summary notification
• Door open -- How many visits? Did the IE answer the door?
• Log for "end of day" summary notification to the PC
• Water level monitor -- Basement flooded? Tub/Sink over filled?
• Beep
• Log for "end of day" summary notification
• Immediate notify PC
• Room temperature monitor -- Does the temperature match the thermostat settings?
• Log for "end of day" summary notification to PC
• Pill Minder -- Monitors usage of medicine cabinet/drawer.. did IE take pills today?
• Notify if pill box has been opened and if opened around correct time(s)
• Log for "end of day" summary notification
• Help Me! Button -- Wearable button that member can press in case of emergency
• Immediate notify listener
• Can also be programmed to (BEEP) notify wearer to take a pill, etc.
• And more to come....