I’m in the process of setting up a HA install for my elderly mum as she’s had a couple of falls and not used an SOS dongle she was given “so not to worry us”
The HA install will be to make her life easier, automated lights and some sensors to help monitor her home. But also for us to detect lack of motion when she’s at home in case something’s up and she’s not telling us (other than her falling asleep in front of the TV )
She never liked the SOS dongle hanging around her neck, getting in her way and often triggered it by accident leaning against kitchen units. In the end she accidentally washed it and it didn’t survive the rinse cycle.
So I just got her a Samsung Watch as an early Christmas present and she’s loving it so far. It’s a lot more convenient and it’s not getting in her way, but she feels a lot more secure having it on her.
What would be great is, if the hard fall detector is enabled in the wearable, then have available on/off sensors in the wearable Home Assistant.
It would be great if there were 2 sensors.
1 for hard fall detection triggered.
1 for SOS initiated by wearer (or not)
That way we can also make smarter notifications such as which motion sensor was activated last so we can tell where in the house they were last when the hard fall sensor was triggered.
For watches that don’t have fall detection, perhaps a sensor that can detect high G motion so that a high G shock could activate a sensor in the app?
p.s. On a side note I have a friend that’s a paramedic and she’s currently working on a dissertation on the importance of getting to fall patients sooner rather than later. Often an elderly fall is seen as low priority compared to other ambulance call-outs, but from her experience it makes a huge difference to the patient if they can get to the person sooner.
They can get them up and settled in a chair, a cup of tea and a chat to make sure they’re ok. But if they’re left for hours then it’s pretty much a guaranteed visit to the hospital.
The only difference between the two scenarios is the amount of time they spend down, so the sooner people can be alerted the better.
I believe the SOS message will stay on the display for a set amount of time for the person to cancel or initiate, but if it’s left for a few minutes then it does the SOS automatically.
unfortunately android does not offer a sensor for this, it seems samsung is doing some magic using the accelerometer and gyroscope. If teh app had unlimited access to those it would severly drain the battery.
Unless there is an official API for this stuff it may just be manufacturer specific.
That’s a shame.
For mobile I guess we could use something like Tasker to monitor G and trigger an HA boolean.
You’d think that for something as useful/important as this it would be more open to use on wearOS.
Do you know if the Apple watch restricted in the same way?
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