Basic Granny Monitoring?

[Tony Angelino]

Afternoon all, we have an elderly parent who lives close to us and we are wanting to try and set up some sort of basic monitoring system that would alert us to any break in their normal routine due to perhaps a fall or worse. They have broadband installed and are happy for us to try and set up some sort of alert system sent to family members if there is any change to their routine, for example:

Not opening/closing certain doors
Not using the kettle

I have looked at various things but everything seems to be geared towards sending alerts when certain triggers happen when we want to do the opposite and send an alert when things don't actually happen as we would normally expect them to. Is there a way we can set things up in reverse using an Echo or a Google dot please? We have a reasonable understanding of technology and smart technology so should be able to set something up if anybody has any ideas please?
thanks

[durbster]

Aqara do a presence sensor that can monitor people moving around an area and it'll even detect a fall apparently. It's called the FP2
https://www.smart-secure.co.uk/blog/product-spotli...

They also do motion and door sensors that you can often pick up for less than £15 so you could have quite a comprehensive system for not a huge outlay.

I have no affiliation, I just have several Aqara sensors in my smart home setup and they're really good (although I use them with Home Assistant rather than the Aqara app).

If you hooked them all up to a Home Assisant (or maybe Smartthings?) hub you could customise the notifications to exactly what you need.

Edited by durbster on Monday 23 October 08:01

[98elise]

I asked a similar question a few months back and basically here isn't anything off the shelf unless you pay for a service.

Like you I wanted simple stuff like an alert if the kettle hadn't been used by a certain time each morning.

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

Edited by 98elise on Monday 23 October 12:07

[durbster]

98elise said:

I asked a similar question a few months back and basically here isn't anything off the shelf unless you pay for a service.

I don't think that's true. The technology is there, it just requires some work to set it up.

OP said they were competent tech-wise and creating a few routines to get notifications from smart devices isn't that difficult.

[2 sMoKiN bArReLs]

We've got strategically placed baby minder type CCTV cameras looking at the things you describe OP.

They are cheap as chips and do a really good job. (This is in addition to a fairly expensive personal alarm/fall detector worn about the body)

[deckster]

durbster said:

98elise said:

I asked a similar question a few months back and basically here isn't anything off the shelf unless you pay for a service.

I don't think that's true. The technology is there, it just requires some work to set it up.

OP said they were competent tech-wise and creating a few routines to get notifications from smart devices isn't that difficult.

This is a fundamentally different kind of routine, though.

Trigger-based notifications are easy. I turn on the light -> Smart thing notices -> it sends a notification. Simple.

But "tell me if this thing hasn't happened" is very different. You need:

• A timer, to wake up and check if a thing has happened
• Some way of saving state, to record whether a thing has happened so the timer can check it
• The timer to then issue the notification that the thing hasn't happened

The server-side functionality to achieve this significantly more rich than your typical notification-based architecture.

It's probably possible. And I'm not an expert in home automation. But this needs a different approach and a different infrastructure than you typically get with your smart home products.

[Far Cough]

Why get complicated ? What's wrong with an alert pendant thats worn and if anything happens it allows 2 way communication. All you need is a phone line.

[MacW]

This may help

[98elise]

durbster said:

98elise said:

I asked a similar question a few months back and basically here isn't anything off the shelf unless you pay for a service.

I don't think that's true. The technology is there, it just requires some work to set it up.

OP said they were competent tech-wise and creating a few routines to get notifications from smart devices isn't that difficult.

They want an alert when something doesn't happen (like a kettle unused by 10am). That doesn't seem easy to do. Have a look at my thread.

[98elise]

deckster said:

durbster said:

98elise said:

I asked a similar question a few months back and basically here isn't anything off the shelf unless you pay for a service.

I don't think that's true. The technology is there, it just requires some work to set it up.

OP said they were competent tech-wise and creating a few routines to get notifications from smart devices isn't that difficult.

This is a fundamentally different kind of routine, though.

Trigger-based notifications are easy. I turn on the light -> Smart thing notices -> it sends a notification. Simple.

But "tell me if this thing hasn't happened" is very different. You need:

• A timer, to wake up and check if a thing has happened
• Some way of saving state, to record whether a thing has happened so the timer can check it
• The timer to then issue the notification that the thing hasn't happened

The server-side functionality to achieve this significantly more rich than your typical notification-based architecture.

It's probably possible. And I'm not an expert in home automation. But this needs a different approach and a different infrastructure than you typically get with your smart home products.

Exactly. The logic is simple and would be a few lines of code to a programmer. There isn't a simple way of implementing that in home automation though.

[jymmm]

This strikes me as something that could be done with homeasistant and a shelly EM or similar

You could monitor electricity use day to day and see that the kettle is in use, TV goes on, washing machine etc.

Can also use cheap PIR sensors, light sensors, temperature etc.

You can have remote access via https://www.nabucasa.com/

Edited by jymmm on Monday 23 October 14:05

[durbster]

98elise said:

deckster said:

durbster said:

98elise said:

I asked a similar question a few months back and basically here isn't anything off the shelf unless you pay for a service.

I don't think that's true. The technology is there, it just requires some work to set it up.

OP said they were competent tech-wise and creating a few routines to get notifications from smart devices isn't that difficult.

This is a fundamentally different kind of routine, though.

Trigger-based notifications are easy. I turn on the light -> Smart thing notices -> it sends a notification. Simple.

But "tell me if this thing hasn't happened" is very different. You need:

• A timer, to wake up and check if a thing has happened
• Some way of saving state, to record whether a thing has happened so the timer can check it
• The timer to then issue the notification that the thing hasn't happened

The server-side functionality to achieve this significantly more rich than your typical notification-based architecture.

It's probably possible. And I'm not an expert in home automation. But this needs a different approach and a different infrastructure than you typically get with your smart home products.

Exactly. The logic is simple and would be a few lines of code to a programmer. There isn't a simple way of implementing that in home automation though.

Most smart home systems allow you to use time as a sensor so you don't need a device to trigger automations.

You could have an energy monitoring plug on a kettle and then check the energy usage each day at 10am, for example. If today's consumption is zero at 10am, send a notification.

For things like door sensors, certainly in Home Assistant you can create custom toggles so the sensor could set a boolean to true when fired, and at 10am or whatever, you can check the state of that boolean.

Or you could maybe interrogate the device to see when it was last set to open.

Once the hardware is set up there are lots of ways of achieving this. The technology is all there.

[98elise]

durbster said:

98elise said:

deckster said:

durbster said:

98elise said:

I asked a similar question a few months back and basically here isn't anything off the shelf unless you pay for a service.

I don't think that's true. The technology is there, it just requires some work to set it up.

OP said they were competent tech-wise and creating a few routines to get notifications from smart devices isn't that difficult.

This is a fundamentally different kind of routine, though.

Trigger-based notifications are easy. I turn on the light -> Smart thing notices -> it sends a notification. Simple.

But "tell me if this thing hasn't happened" is very different. You need:

• A timer, to wake up and check if a thing has happened
• Some way of saving state, to record whether a thing has happened so the timer can check it
• The timer to then issue the notification that the thing hasn't happened

The server-side functionality to achieve this significantly more rich than your typical notification-based architecture.

It's probably possible. And I'm not an expert in home automation. But this needs a different approach and a different infrastructure than you typically get with your smart home products.

Exactly. The logic is simple and would be a few lines of code to a programmer. There isn't a simple way of implementing that in home automation though.

Most smart home systems allow you to use time as a sensor so you don't need a device to trigger automations.

You could have an energy monitoring plug on a kettle and then check the energy usage each day at 10am, for example. If today's consumption is zero at 10am, send a notification.

For things like door sensors, certainly in Home Assistant you can create custom toggles so the sensor could set a boolean to true when fired, and at 10am or whatever, you can check the state of that boolean.

Or you could maybe interrogate the device to see when it was last set to open.

Once the hardware is set up there are lots of ways of achieving this. The technology is all there.

Triggering the check isn't an issue. As you say timed events are a basic function. The harder bit is recording that an event happened earlier (the kettle being operated). I tried getting my smart devices to write to a spreadsheet (as a basic database) but it didn't work.

[durbster]

98elise said:

durbster said:

Most smart home systems allow you to use time as a sensor so you don't need a device to trigger automations.

You could have an energy monitoring plug on a kettle and then check the energy usage each day at 10am, for example. If today's consumption is zero at 10am, send a notification.

For things like door sensors, certainly in Home Assistant you can create custom toggles so the sensor could set a boolean to true when fired, and at 10am or whatever, you can check the state of that boolean.

Or you could maybe interrogate the device to see when it was last set to open.

Once the hardware is set up there are lots of ways of achieving this. The technology is all there.

Triggering the check isn't an issue. As you say timed events are a basic function. The harder bit is recording that an event happened earlier (the kettle being operated). I tried getting my smart devices to write to a spreadsheet (as a basic database) but it didn't work.

That's where you use a custom toggle, which is a separate entity that has its own state. I just created this with Home Assistant. I created a custom toggle called "Thing happened"

The device sets the toggle to "On" when triggered:


Then another automation checks the toggle's state at 10am and sends a notification if it's off:

[OutInTheShed]

When I had an empty house, I could log in to its Octopus account and see that the heating had come on.

Years ago, a work colleague had a simple alarm system which sent an SMS image eevery time it was triggered.
Generally a source of cat pictures of course.

For my Dad, we got an alarm thingy, but not a pendant, it was wrist worn.

[98elise]

durbster said:

98elise said:

durbster said:

Most smart home systems allow you to use time as a sensor so you don't need a device to trigger automations.

You could have an energy monitoring plug on a kettle and then check the energy usage each day at 10am, for example. If today's consumption is zero at 10am, send a notification.

For things like door sensors, certainly in Home Assistant you can create custom toggles so the sensor could set a boolean to true when fired, and at 10am or whatever, you can check the state of that boolean.

Or you could maybe interrogate the device to see when it was last set to open.

Once the hardware is set up there are lots of ways of achieving this. The technology is all there.

Triggering the check isn't an issue. As you say timed events are a basic function. The harder bit is recording that an event happened earlier (the kettle being operated). I tried getting my smart devices to write to a spreadsheet (as a basic database) but it didn't work.

That's where you use a custom toggle, which is a separate entity that has its own state. I just created this with Home Assistant. I created a custom toggle called "Thing happened"

The device sets the toggle to "On" when triggered:


Then another automation checks the toggle's state at 10am and sends a notification if it's off:

Thanks, it looks like I'll need a hub for Home Assistant so I'll get one. It was also recommended when I last asked this question but it wasn't compatible with my old phone (S7)

I've upgraded my phone recently so have now installed it.

I suspect I can get away with a motion sensor rather then a plug monitor. I just need it positioned near the kettle.

[megaphone]

A simple CCTV camera with motion alerts set, you could set them to trigger motion say between 9am and 10am, if nothing triggers you can take a look.

[Tony Angelino]

Thanks ever so much for all the replies, too many to reply back to all the individual ones but I really appreciate everybody taking the time to say their bit. A couple of bits from in reply:

Worn alarm: We are having trouble convincing them to wear something 24/7, I appreciate that this is the most foolproof option but it doesn't look likely.

Camera: Not wanted, we had the same discussion/argument about a video doorbell so whilst the motion/door sensor is acceptable it took us a long time to get agreement for this.

Computer savvines: I have a basic smart system at home using echo dots, simple routines like turning on/off lights and alarms etc, I have messed about with IFFF and I can follow instructions to an extent and am happy to tinker with stuff but I'm no programmer.

I will take a look at the Home Assistant and the reddit link and also check the previous thread and update when I get somewhere.
Thanks all.