The kettle power spike monitor is brilliant. Its unobtrusive and can be a very good indicator of when a daily routine becomes interrupted.
Webcams might be considered by many independent elderly people to be too intrusive.
Its probably going a bit far to ask an octogenarian to wear a bluetooth/wifi fitness bracelet, but the contents of a Texas Instrument Sensortag or the Broadcom Wiced Sense could feasibly be worn around the neck if packaged differently.
One question I would ask is how secure is this data ?
Also how about an anxiety level monitor for the person actually viewing the data and ahving to deal with the consequences ?
Great Work.

Great stuff. I too have spent the last 9 months building a similar system with multiple alerts and some funkey stuff with wireless sensors and some home automation. Can someone at Pi Towers put me in touch with Jamie.

I would like to know more. Possibly get involved.

Is the source code available somewhere?

I live 180 miles from my Mum and I think this sounds like a great idea. I’d certainly be interested in getting involved.

I like the idea. Unfortunately those graphs (generated by rrd-tool) look mediocre. I solved this by exporting the rrd-tool data as xml files and then use a JavaScript library do the rendering. My Raspberry Pi hosts a site that monitors the temperatures in my apartment: Home Temperatures

This is a great idea and allows our older family members to remain independant with a non intrusive monitoring service. Please put me in touch with Jamie.

Excellent work. I would like to know more, and am interested in becoming involved. I have some experience and an interest in home monitoring in Canada.

Interesting – would like to know more and possibly contribute

Awesome!!!

I am a real-time systems engineer and was considering building something like this for my 86 year old mother-in-law. I am extreemly interested and would like to help.

I am very new to this raspberry pi thing having just bought one for my grandson but have spent most of my working life in computers, I spent about four years working for a part of the NHS installing commercially produced systems like the ones being developed in this blog so I might be able to contribute a few ideas. I am also working on developing a means of communicating with people with dementia, living in their own homes who are finding telephones and certainly mobiles too complicated. It would involve the help of an android application programmer. Keep up the good work.

Please put me in contact with Jamie

I work for an FQHC health center that has recently expanded its “Care Coordinator” program which involves working closely with a lot of our elderly patients. This project could have some useful applications in that area.
Nice work!

I am very interested in your project. I live in Washington State. I have elderly parents. Please allow me to participate. Thanks for considering my offer of help.

Hello many thanks for the positive comments :)
My mini Pi server is taking 000s of hits at present, sorry if anyone finds it a bit slow.
I plan to release more information as things develop at:
pihomeguard.co.uk

When I get time I’ll publish some more news on the Android app, which is working really well. Full control of all configuration inc colours etc all from the app.
best regards,
Jamie.

This is the perfect answer to the age-old question: “But what is it good for?” A journey of a thousand miles begins with Hello World, and takes us to places like PiHomeGuard.

I have a Pi with a webcam that monitors movement – it emails me at work or can send an SMS so I know my Mum (92) is up and moving around. Just having those emails tick over while I’m at my desk is a great comfort.

This is a great idea I would like to get involved as well I also live 150+ miles away from my dad. Please put me in touch with Jamie

Thank you

Hello can you please add the below text to the end of your excellent article:

My mini Pi server is taking 000s of hits at present, sorry if anyone finds it a bit slow. Please see more details at my information site: http://pihomeguard.co.uk

Many thanks to all at Pi Foundation,
best regards & Merry Christmas,
Jamie

This is such a wonderful project! I strongly believe that a business can be started out of it. I am very much interested in contributing to this in any way i can. Please connect me to Jamie.

Like many others I had a similar idea; After a bit of thought I considered the bare minimum sensors, to non-intrusively detect normal activity, was power and the kettle spike phenomonen and a water flowing meter\sensor. The presumption being that a loo refills in a regular way and can be detected as a water spike. The Pi could then learn patterns of behaviour and raise warnings of varying severity if the pattern changes or dissapears.

I’m the maintainer of the Raspbian (minimal) unattended netinstaller and I’d love to add features (if needed) to support your project.

Awesome work!

Awsome project, just what i have been looking for. Would love to know more about the project. It is exactly the kind of help my parents need to be able to stay independent. It would also be great to use for monitoring our remote holiday home.

I added a cmd line sendmail program to my grandma’s PC so that every time she turned it on, it sends an email to myself and sister. She usually checks her email or facebook every day, so is a good indicator of activity.

Several command line mail sending programs for PCs are available, but I use:
http://www.petri.com/send_mail_from_script.htm
https://github.com/muquit/mailsend

Hi. I just love your project. I would use it at home. At my parents summer cottage and in their home. I would like to help in any way possible. Most likely as a code reviewer/tester i’m quite good at data analysis. I have an education in hardware repair but have never used it. I have worked as a programmer and it specialist for 15 years. I haven’t been programming for the past 10 years…

Interested in collaboration /investment. I’ve a strong background in home/building automation/control systems. UK based, how that’s not a problem. R.

Hi, that’s an awesome project and one I follow since I’ve looking into setting up a monitoring system for my house since we got a basement flood back in June. Let me know if I can help.

Forgot to add this to my comment, how about adding a carbon monoxide sensor, smoke and fire sensor, also air quality sensor. Are there any sensors which can check on your furnace to see if it works properly? Thanks again.

It’s great to see so much interest in this project! I’ve passed on to Jamie the email addresses of everyone who has asked to be put in touch with him, and I’ll watch out for anyone else commenting who would like me to do the same.

Awsome!
Judging from the interest level, I strongly suggest that a new forum topic is started (HomeGuard ?) so everybody can keep informed and contribute.

Recently had an issue with a elderly relative, where she called to let us know that the power had cut off. We traveled up the next day to fix the issue to also find that the heating hadn’t been working for about a week, but it wasn’t mentioned as they “didn’t want to cause a fuss”. Both were fix in 5 minutes (only took 5 hours to get there).
The remote temperature feature would have been great to know about this beforehand.
I would suggest the following optional features; a secondary battery power supply (so power outages can be recorded), and secondary internet connection (USB mobile broadband dongle), so that if the primary fails (ISP issue, or no power) an alert can still be sent. Also under some situations a USB dongle might be a cheaper way to connect to the internet if there are no other uses for it.

Awesome project.
I need this, and very soon.
Mom is 88 and widowed, and routinely will let things go because she does not wish to trouble us.

Thank you for the excellent solution to monitoring.

fantastic idea, good opportunities to develop add ons etc.

Awesome! Now if only I could stop thinking about what the NSA could do with this.

What a great idea. They must be a huge market in the US for the Baby Boomer generation.

I would like to suggest adding a panic button in case grand mom or grand dad had a problem and needed help.

Jeff, a baby boomer ;)

Interesting project. Please pass my details on to Jamie as I’d like to get involved if I can.

My mom had a stroke recently and her mobility is limited. I’d like to install a system like this. Please include me in the development.
Thank you!

Duc

it’s a great project and product … could be used for many applications.
The greatest challenge is the wireless and long life sensors ! (ok the android app is a real plus as well ;)).

How to get updated is there is a kickstarter started ? or a product launched ? or some sources openned ? etc.
I did my registeration of interest on the website but is there more I can do ?

hi,jamie.
Like others who have posted on he I too have been using my raspberry pi to check on family members. I would be interested in your project and would like to help out with it

Great information…so what’s the next step?

I was wondering if more technical details were available, and if you’d thought to add camera / motion detection support into the system?
That’s a project I’ve been thinking about for a while and I’d be interested in getting involved, if its something that fits? Or learning about the approach / architecture.
Great project though.

Please ask Steve Amir if he would mind sharing his dongle SMS script with me.

Good article. I will be dealing with a few of these issues as
well..

Good ideas!
I needed something for my alzheimer mother (79).