GrannyAlerts

“GrannyAlerts" is a monitoring system that provides the reassurance that your friend or relative is safe and going about their daily routine in their own home. The system is designed to give assurance (on top of regular visits and conversations) that all is well.

GrannyAlerts sends Alerts to a nominated email and Android or iOS smart phone when there is a break in routine which might be cause for concern and identifies that help may be needed.

  GrannyAlerts offers vast flexibility in both its Monitoring and its Alerting. GrannyAlerts can monitor the use of the electric kettle, the fridge door being opened and closed, whether access doors to the house have been opened & closed. It can detect motion e.g. in the hallway or first floor landing, or reports on temperature specific areas of the house. Any of these items can then be used as a trigger to raise an alert and / or provide summary information. For example Alerts could be raised if the fridge has not been opened by 9am each day, or if the front door has been left open for more than two minutes, or if there has not been motion detected in the kitchen, in the last two hours, during the daytime but only when the house is 'occupied'.

The setup and timings documented below are designed for a specfic lifestyle and property layout, but can easily be adapted to different people or situations.

Background

My mother (aka "Grandma") lives on her own, about 2 miles from us. Now in her 70's, Grandma is fully independent, is a car driver, and gets on with life. We enjoy the support of Grandma with our young children, meaning Grandma usually helps with afternoon nursery & school pickups a couple of times a week.

During early to mid 2016, we had two events that led to be developing this system - an elderly lady was found several days after an apparent collapse, close to the allotment that Grandma maintains; and Grandma went 'missing' for 3 days (myself and my sister had telephoned and left answerphone messages over two days, but these had been missed) - it turned out Grandma was getting on with life & tracked her down by phoning round her friends.

Grandma herself had suggested a monitoring device that had been advertised in a newspaper - 3 Rings. This was definitely suitable but some quick research showed that off the shelf technology is now available to develop a similar solution with slightly more flexibility (3Rings has been developing it's offering to include additional sensors, details on the link above).

Grandma does not have a smart phone (& is not keen to have one), her mobile phone is not always with her, on, or charged...

The Requirements

so what did I need to get from a solution?

1. Monitor when and how often the electric kettle is used - as expected Grandma never goes for long without making a cup of tea - most importantly for this project - first thing in the morning, and usually when returning from a trip out.
2. Provide notifications to myself & my sister if Grandma's routine was not followed (this was taken as being making a cup of tea during a morning time slot, and a cup of tea during an early evening time slot).
3. Notify ideally via text (SMS) message (which is reasonably reliable) and email, to mobile devices.
4. Use existing services (Grandma has BT ADSL installed), rather than e.g. using a mobile data connection that would incur ongoing charges
5. Be secure - any use of the internet needs to be secure - no port forwarding to an appliance that does not get patched.
6. Be reliable - it needs to 'just work'
7. Need no lifestyle change from Grandma
8. Respect Grandma's privacy (several people suggested monitoring how often Grandma uses the bathroom - this idea is a big "no")
9. Be cost effective - the cost of the 3 Rings solution over 2 years gave a staring point, giving a budget of approx £300
10. Be capable of adaptation as Grandma's situation changes - e.g. more detailed monitoring may be required in the future
11. The solution should be capable of informing of internal health issues (e.g. system outage) - more on this later
12. The solution should be capable of being backed up & restored - I'm a firm believer that if it's not backed up, then your data does not really exist

The Solution

The aim of the solution was to achieve this:

The solution is based on a Home Automation controller, chosen based on the following criteria:

• stability (based on forum discussion & reviews)
• the level of active support from the vendor
• (low) power usage - the controller is mains powered and is on 24/7
• form factor
• frequency of updates
• the user support community
• a local solution - with data remaining 'on site'.

The solution is proving stable & flexible, having been in use for some 18 months.

A stand-alone remote access solution was included - remote access saves a lot of time & gives more information during any periods of concern; I dislike exposing the controller directly to the internet for security reasons.

Sensors

A variety of sensors are used:

• Door sensors, to monitor when access doors are opened.
• Movement (PIR) sensors in the hallway (near front door) and on the first floor landing
• A plug socket controller, that monitors when and how often the device (e.g. a kettle) plugged in is used (to make Grandma cups of tea)
• A door sensor on the fridge door

Some of the above sensors include the ability to record temperature and / or ambient light level.

Additional sensors are available:

• A flood sensor, to detect water on a flat surface, or via a short cable / probe
• Gas & electrical meter sensors, to monitor power and gas usage
• Smoke / heat alarms

 

The door & motion sensors are used to provide a 'last activity' timestamp whenever an alert message is sent, and are referenced by a simple algorithm to indicate whether the house is occupied or not.

The Home Controller, the ADSL router, the remote access solution and the cordless land-line phone have been connected to a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) - this will warn (email) during power outage, run the system for about 30 minutes & power down components in a controlled manner until mains power is restored.

Communications

The solution communicates to close relatives (my sister & myself) using email & 'Push notifications' (an iOS & Android app called 'Pushover'). Alerts are currently triggered at 09:00hrs and 19:30hrs if alert criteria are met.

When an alert is triggered the system will also update via subsequent messages when

• someone next enters the house, and
• when the kettle is next used.

SMS (text) messaging has not been implemented so far, emails & the Pushover application cover the requirement for SMS.

The solution sends out daily updates (a daily email at 17:00hrs) to confirm the system is working as expected, as there is currently no 'active' system monitoring that would warn me if the system became unreponsive (or was simply unplugged from the UPS)

Alerts can be put on hold easily for when Grandma is away for a few days, or is on holiday, and can be taken off hold easily via or via a schedule or a simple remote command.

Conclusion

The system works better than expected - Grandma is reliable with her use of the kettle.

Almost all the 'false alerts' from the system have been due to Grandma being round at my house in the evening.

The system is typically very 'quiet' - it does not alert for weeks on end, with the daily status emails giving reassurance that the monitoring is active.

The sensors all work well, following some minor tuning due to transmission / reception issues (limitations of the low power radio signal through multiple brick walls). Batteries last around a year, depending on how frequently the sensor is activated, and are cheap and easy to replace.

An example alert, showing the series of email messages is below:

 

 

 

 

This solution has generated some unexpected benefits:

• the system highlighted that a door had been left open when Grandma went away for a few days (I was able to pop round, confirm & sort
• The system has recorded increased overnight indoor temperatures (during winter), following loft insulation improvements.
• During (& due to) testing the setup it was discovered that Grandma's ADSL service was re-connecting to the exchange up to every 15 minutes and whenever phone calls were made or received - this was quickly fixed (I'm confident that the service had been doing this for years)

Planned improvements

In no particular order, the following are being considered:

1. Active monitoring of the solution from a remote location - to report if the system is not responsive.
2. providing a more detailed "last 24 hours" timeline view of sensor activity, either via secure website portal or remote access to the system
3. Take a feed from the intruder alarm to report an active alarm, and monitor when the alarm is set / unset
4. Take a feed from the hardwired smoke / heat alarms (this will probably happen when the alarms are due to be replaced after the end of their 10-year lifespan)
5. Add an external temperature probe, possibly also a temperature sensor in the greenhouse
6. Refine the monitoring & alerting as required, (e.g. add alerts if the house is marked as 'occupied' during the day, but there is no activity from the motion sensors for >2 hours and / or the fridge has not been opened for >2 hours and / or the kettle has not been used for >2 hours)
7. if I'm going to set this up for other users, then configure mobile data connectivity (instead of ADSL)
8. Monitor Grandma's presence in the house using, either via a key-fob (Grandma rarely to never goes out without keys) sensor or a sensor in Grandma's handbag (Grandma rarely to never leaves her handbag at home, though it's sometimes left at our house...)

 

Additional information

If you are interested in further information, please contact me using the link below.

You may find the following links useful:

3 Rings produce a similar system (service terminated on 1st March 2019)

Grandcare produce a similar system (website appears to be offline as at April 2019)

Canary Care - similar to the above

Just Checking - another similar system

I'm aware of pilot activities by a number of UK Health Trusts to use similar monitoring solutions

It's worth mentioning GPS Tracker devices (longer battery life, lower cost than a smart phone)

BBC News article on using technology to "live with dementia" (April 2019)