I wonder if anyone has a robust and not too hard or expensive solution to raise a local alarm when an elderly person with dementia falls over? The requirement is to alert the live-in carer if there is an emergency (genuine fall) but not for normal movements such as night trips to the toilet or normal noises such as talking to Alexa.
I have found three approaches in theory, but do not have a proven practical solution for any of them.
Personal device like a watch or pendant. Devices with accelerometers are commercially available but usually as part of a service that alerts a call centre, which requires a monthly subscription. Anyway she had one before and it never worked when she actually fell, and she did not understand that she could press a button to call for help.
If I find a reliable 433 Mhz medical device, I could in theory directly intercept the signal using an Evil Crow or similar SWR board, but I first need to hack the signal using HackRF, then find a way of linking Evil Crow with Home assistant. Any shortcuts or simpler solution would be appreciated!
Many smart watches and wearable fitness devices have fall detection, but has anyone found a way to use them for this purpose? They generally need either a smartphone to make the emergency call, which may be out of range in this scenario, or use LTE, which assumes a strong mobile signal, which is not the case here. Ideally WiFi or direct radio should be used.
Baby monitor. The present carer said she previously used a camera-based device that could sense when someone called out in pain, and could distinguish between that and normal talking. However she was unable to provide any details and I have not found one by searching the internet. I’m not sure a camera is even needed, but does anyone know of any voice recognition that can distinguish shock or pain from normal speech?
mmWave presence detector. There are some mmWave devices that can (allegedly) detect falls, presumably by measuring the distance from the ceiling to the living person, however I have not found one that has been shown to be reliable in practice and compatible with HA. I would need such a device for at least four rooms, which is quite expensive, and installation is tricky because they need 5V power in the middle of the celling — where to run the wires?
I would very much appreciate details of any solution known to work, preferably (but not necessarily) with HA.
I doubt if there’s a single solution to this - a combination of several approaches might be best.
I have three which work in tests - fortunately they’ve never been needed for real:
Alarm buttons mounted at floor level at typical fall points (bathroom, stairs). This would be very easy to implement if you have a live-in carer. I use Zigbee buttons.
Sounds as if you have Alexa. There are several automated emergency alert services which have an Alexa skill. There will be a subscription (I use My SOS Family which is only £20.00 a year and support is excellent). I have set up a routine, so that “Alexa - emergency, call for help” triggers the service, and that in turn sends email, SMS and voice calls to a list of contacts.
This one is a bit weird (only set up to see if it was possible). I use the Bayesian integration to monitor about a dozen factors - is the TV on, what time of day is it, are keys/phone/watch at home etc. - and decide whether the house is probably occupied. If it is and there has been no movement for a set period an alarm sounds. Works surprisingly well, providing there are enough observations to make a sensible prediction.
I do not have a solution for you, but I also need one. As this can be a life or death situation, a “hobby” solution with perhaps limited resources to test and validate might not be what we want. There are a number of commercial options with tested equipment and years of experience. Having subscribed with a couple of them in the past, they work and the cost isnt unreasonable for the service. Perhaps a HA Integration could be developed to allow us access to their sensors data for our account for our consumption. Their data smartly integrated with HA data would potentially offer more instghts into the wellbeing of those we are trying to care for.
I used the TP-C110 Cam to do exactly that, I used the Baby Crying and Movement detection function as a baby monitor within Frigate.
In case you gonna buy one, don’t update the camara firmware, as there are some integration issues with the firmware since 2024. I installed older firmware and blocked the cams internet access to keep the system up and running.
I’m also interested in fall detectors in general, and I’m in contact with some developer in China, …
to give you a example whats possible at the given time.
in 2021 Texas Instrument released a Chip which suppose to be used in Hospitals for Fall Detection, … they used a mmWave Sensor and packed a lot of software behind it, which made falling behind a shower curtain even possible to detect.
the Chip calls (IWR6843AOP), a video to it you can find here: https://www.ti.com/video/6247990238001
cost point as far I could find it was 130USD, but without the software and just the sensor.
further down the line, the latest Chip I found was the C1001 which works with ESP32, so its more of a DIY project.
related link is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL6rvUwu5pM
thats all I can share by now; that Chip costs 35USD
only downside I would give here is the detection distance for fall detection is 3m.
for life sign detection its ca. 1.5m