This is my summary for the Forget Me Not challenge.
When this Challenge was first presented, I thought about what I could offer as a solution.
These are all very noble reasons to utilize the power of the Internet, and have machines report their status to a targeted or wider audience, but there had to be a more practical solution.
My application is based on Non Intrusive monitoring.
For this challenge I was thinking about using it to monitor 'Granny'.
There are many elderly that prefer to be independent, not rely on others, or have a fuss made.
While they are capable, there is still a requirement to passively monitor them to ensure small problems don't become larger health problems.
This doesn't suit all cultures, and countries, but certainly here in New Zealand we have an aging population, that live in their own homes, but sometimes need checking on.
In many situations the family is not in the same town, and while a phone call never goes astray, the answers to some questions will always be 'positive'.
The idea was not to see instantaneous status, but data based on historic information that could be minutes, hours or longer old.
This information would then show trends, or changes in the normal pattern, which may trigger an action.
I called this eLDERmon.
During this challenge, I've referred to 'Granny', but the technology and application applies equally to someone who requires someone to keep an eye on them.
Solution
For my solution I chose to monitor Movement, Temperatures, Humidity and Light levels, to ascertain the state of the occupants of the house.
I was able to utilise EnOcean wireless sensors in all but the Hot water monitor, where the location and method of measuring the water pipe presented its own challenges.
For the solution to be effective, it should be easy to implement by non technical persons, and leave no permanent markings (ie holes).
Granny is unlikely to be very happy, if you intend to drill holes in her home, regardless of the overall benefits.
I've overcome this with my PIR mount. ( detailed here eLDERmon Final Assembly )
This is safe, easy to manufacture, low cost and effective.
The business end of this (Raspberry Pi, EnOcean Pi and its connections) need to be protected and hidden away, and a suitable enclosure that doesn't look out of place, was another consideration.
Hence 'The Book' was conceived.
Adding Wireless Charging gave another 'aid' to Granny and was featured in the 'Beyond the Phone' challenge.
We added a similar feature in a school 'Neighbourhood Engineer' competition I assisted with where their theme was "Technology to assist the Elderly'.
Data showing trends is best seen in graphs, and while OpenHAB has graphing capabilities, the fixed format was not flexible enough for my solution.
HABmin is an add-on that among other things provides the flexible graphing necessary to gather the information required to make informed decisions. (see eLDERmon Graphs )
This example shows just three data sources, but clearly indicates the thermal gain by having the curtains open on a sunny day.
It also shows they were open before the sun rose, and therefore indicates someone was up.
Obstacles
During this challenge, there has been many "bumps in the road" rather than obstacles, and as other competitors have found, you engineer a solution to overcome these.
Starting with Hardware and Software that you're not familiar or have no experience with, was one bump, but with assistance and sharing from the others, most of these were overcome.
EnOcean have been extremely generous with the hardware, and the supporting documentation is readily available.
OpenHAB is a very versatile piece of software and we are only using small parts of it. The documentation is not quite suited to a raw novice, but its free and appears to have a large following.
Hopefully our posts have helped fill in some missing information, which may inspire others to investigate using it for their projects.
Conclusions
This challenge has been enjoyable, frustrating, educational, inspirational, rewarding, co-operative, and many other words.
It has been a pleasure to be involved, and to learn new 'stuff' from so many other people I've never personally met.
I've tried to stick with my original design and not get distracted by adding additional features.
I touched on Electrical safety and some safe methods to achieve results, but this was included in my application.
The RPIsoc was not part of the original design, and I had many personal commitments besides this challenge, that got shuffled.
My intention is to spend the time coming up to speed with this new hardware, and integrate it into a warning device as a stand alone feature.
Apart from some fine tuning, I'm happy that I've achieved the original goal I set, and produced a working product that could be deployed at 'Grannies' house.
(My parents aren't ready for this, and I'm sure I'd be struck from the will if I insisted they needed it)
Thanks
These Challenges cannot be held without sponsors, and some clever ideas from the people at element14.
Our sponsors EnOcean, Tektronix, OpenHAB, Eclipse, Cadsoft, and element14 have been very generous and either supplied Hardware, Software or financial support to enable the competitors to achieve their solution.
We've even been encouraged along the way with incentives in the form of Minions.
I'd like to also thank all the other competitors, who shared their findings and knowledge along the way and co-operated in what could be the best global co-operation I've seen.
The T-Shirt should read "... I shared the Forget Me Not Challenge with 20 others I've never met ...and we all came out winners ..."
Thanks very much for the opportunity.
Mark Beckett
I look forward to the next Challenge, but can I catch up on the jobs around here first ...
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