back to article Granny's Guardian: Acorn BBC Micro hero touts OAP watchdog kit

Acorn Computers co-founder Chris Curry has popped up with Canary – a new bit of kit that keeps tabs on oldsters and alerts relatives if something goes wrong. The system is installed in an elderly person's home and uses a set of sensors to monitor temperature, movements, and even who comes to visit. While it does not use …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Granny's Guardian...

    I see what you did there. Awesome.

    1. Moeluk

      Re: Granny's Guardian...

      as did I...puntastic headline.

    2. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Granny's Guardian...

      That brings back the music...

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGXixy3QIV0

  2. TRT Silver badge

    I just hope the kit...

    has an IP rating for prevention of ingress of bird seed.

  3. John Young 1

    Hmmm...

    "Back in the early 1980s, Curry help create the UK's Acorn BBC Micro, which kickstarted a generation of Brit bedroom programmer"

    Ahem, ZX Spectrum......

    1. James Hughes 1

      Re: Hmmm...

      Ahem, BBC Micro.

      1. mccp

        Re: Hmmm...

        Ahem, ZX81.

        1. Gordon 10
          Mushroom

          Re: Hmmm...

          Ahem - ZX80 - if by bedroom programming you mean typing it from a magazine then knocking the powersupply at line 299 of 300.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    idea

    He can use it to spy on Sir Clive Sinclair

  5. Pete 2 Silver badge

    Cheap at half the price

    > It costs £225 for the goods,

    Yikes!

    The one I built for an aged relative, last year, amounted to the cost of a RPi + Wifi card + PIR, DHT11, loudspeaker + amp and a light sensor. Including the (tastefully varnished) wooden box the total was < £100.

    It also had some additional features that proved to be the unexpected highlight, so far as A.R. was concerned. There's nothing quite as comforting (apparently) as entering your living room in the morning and hearing a cheerful "Good Morning" from a familiar voice.

    Sadly, the SD card soon got tired with the constant writes to /var/log and gave up the ghost after a few months. But the Mk2 learned from that, runs from an Olimex A20 that has NAND on board and holds all the sensor data in RAMFS - and has lots of other added features.

    Now, if I can just get the Kivy interface going on the touchscreen ...

    1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: Cheap at half the price

      "It costs £225 for the goods"

      That was ex-VAT. I've put the inc VAT prices in.

      C.

    2. James Hughes 1

      Re: Cheap at half the price

      Why didn't you just use the Raspi and RAMFS? And note that NAND on board suffers the same write limit problem as SD cards, albeit does last longer due to better wear levelling.

      1. Pete 2 Silver badge

        Re: Cheap at half the price

        > Why didn't you just use the Raspi and RAMFS

        Because in my impetuousness, I bought a very early (yes I was up at 6 a.m. on release day, trying to order off the website - won't do that again) Model B that only had 256MB. I think I've isolated almost all of the write activity to RAM, so hopefully NAND lifetimes won't be a limiting factor. Nor will mechanical connections to the n/v storage.

        I also wanted the Mk2 to have audio input capabilities and the Olimex SBC also comes with a LiPo interface so it will run off an outboard battery (6600maH - the size of 3 * AA jobbies: good for over a day) thus making RAMFS viable. It also has enough GPIO for aforementioned 800x480 touch screen. But this is getting to sound a bit like an advertisement and I'd hate to make the Bulgarians blush.

        1. Salts

          Re: Cheap at half the price

          No need to blush, good project, may have to look at something similar for my parents, living overseas as I do it would probably benefit myself and the wife as much as them, perhaps one at each end so mom can check on us via the iPad, thinking about it she would love it if she could check on us, in fact it may be more beneficial that way round, I would passively know they are OK and the parents get the active checks that give them a constant involvement :-)

          Do you have a blog post on the project?

          I assume you have seen this last week http://www.davidhunt.ie/piphone-a-raspberry-pi-based-smartphone/ I know you moved to the Olimex, but the touch screen as you plan and the GSM/GPRS unit could be a nice addition.

          1. Pete 2 Silver badge

            Re: Cheap at half the price

            I was thinking of blogging about it, but I had a word with myself and came to the conclusion that I would not want to be held responsible (rightly or wrongly) for a monitoring failure that led to injury or death. I could imagine a situation where someone had either implemented my project correctly but I had made a mistake somewhere, or that they had bogged it and the result was it failed to alert the right person in a timely manner. Now, one could counter that by saying that if said person hadn't had a monitor n the first place, they'd be no worse off - but I didn't want to be put in that position: of beta testing with some elderly folk who were unaware of the development status of the hardware and code.

            Although the aged relative in question already has the full gamut of smoke alarms and CO alarms. I have added an air quality sensor (small analog device, looks like an electret microphone) to check the air in the room. It's surprisingly sensitve to fly-spray and other household chemicals / cleaners. There is also an LRGB sensor that can use the RGB components of the ambient light to distinguish daylight from room lighting. Dark in daytime implies curtains weren't opened (bad sign) and movement with no light is downright mysterious - unless they have a cat. The LiPo controller also makes it possible to detect power cuts and light an LED in that circumstance.

            Apropos the Pi phone: yes I did see that and I'm hoping that when the code is published I can take a look at the GUI, for tips and shortcuts. At present I'm thinking of coding the touch interface (Olimex have a range of touch-screens, I have a 7-incher which should allow for sufficiently large buttons for shakey fingers to hit). At present the A20 is running Debian and Xfce, so the GUI would be a full-screen layer on top of that. I really don't want to expose any facet of the O/S to the users.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Cheap at half the price

      Retail price is typically four times the component cost. So your thing looks expensive. It also requires an Internet connection at maybe £20 a month and is somewhat beyond the capabilities of most people who want to have some peace of mind around their elderly relatives.

    4. kmac499

      Re: Cheap at half the price

      I'd thought of using an RPi to do the same thing.. My idea was to use two sensors initially.

      A microphone/flow meter on the water main and one of those radio ammeters as used by smart meters on the rising leccy main.

      The RPi would then learn patterns of behaviour, water flowing for 1:30 is the loo refilling, a short 2kw load is the kettle etc Add an RTC or a daemon to check a timeserver and abnormal or zero behaviour could easily be spotted and the alarm raised via an SMS portal.. Plus the RPi has plenty of ports left for wifi,,a panic button, movement sensors, help speaker etc.... The new compute platform sounds perfect as the hub for such a device

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Cheap at half the price @kmac499

        "The RPi would then learn patterns of behaviour, water flowing for 1:30 is the loo refilling, a short 2kw load is the kettle etc Add an RTC or a daemon to check a timeserver and abnormal or zero behaviour could easily be spotted and the alarm raised via an SMS portal.. Plus the RPi has plenty of ports left for wifi,,a panic button, movement sensors, help speaker etc.... The new compute platform sounds perfect as the hub for such a device"

        Wow. That'd be really creepy.

  6. Chronos
    Facepalm

    Just what elderly people need!

    Even fewer in-person visits from family and friends. I'm sure they'll all be very grateful.

    1. mccp

      Re: Just what elderly people need!

      @Chronos:

      Having once rescued my downstairs neighbour who had fallen in her kitchen and lay immobile with a broken hip for 4 hours before I happened to hear her calls for help when I returned home, any kind of smart alarm system has to be worthwhile.

    2. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
      Big Brother

      Re: Just what elderly people need!

      Too right, last thing I need is my various sundry relatives hanging around my arse annoying the fek out of me and only finally clearing off when they've scoffed all the chocolate hobnobs and guzzled my beer.

      Boris

      But without it I get to die cold and alone on the kitchen floor....... instead of cold , alone, unfed, and neglected in a NHS hospital.....

  7. Scott Broukell
    Meh

    The next step . . . .

    Being the addition of at least one Robo-Arsewipe® an iTea-Maker® and a Washomatic-Robo-Bather®, perhaps a couple of video camera links, and the care home industry will be washed down the (bed)pan as granny and pops can stay in their own accommodation to enjoy their lingering deaths without the need to endure endless rounds of brain-atrophying sing-a-longs and knees-ups.

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
      Happy

      Re: The next step . . . .

      without the need to endure endless rounds of brain-atrophying sing-a-longs and knees-ups.

      What are you talking about! My Chas-n-Dave-o-Matic-Knees-up-Mother-Brown-o-Tron is goes down a storm with the old dears, and is going to make my fortune!

  8. NogginTheNog
    Coat

    Cue all the...

    ..smart-arse comments along the lines of "children should take responsibility for their own parents and not just leave them unsupervised" like we always see whenever the subject of 'net filtering pops up!

    1. Duffy Moon

      Re: Cue all the...

      Given the rising cost of housing (especially in the Greater London area), many people will continue to live with their parents until the latter are elderly. My brother and I are already in this situation.

  9. AndrueC Silver badge
    Unhappy

    You know you're getting old when...

    ..the aged relative you care about is actually your parent.

    1. Tromos

      Could be worse...

      ...as in the aged relative being your son or daughter.

  10. davidp231

    Elite

    I would have thought that would be first-party... since it was originally published by Acorn's software department, Acornsoft.

  11. Glen 1

    Not exactly original

    How is this any different from http://www.justchecking.co.uk/ ?

    They've been going for about a decade.

  12. pferdy

    Think about your own old age

    Great stuff. Can you remember your great grandmother (or father)? Can you imagine yourself at age 90? With luck your brain may be alert, but your body will have degenerated in many ways. You are probably living alone. You are at risk of a fall or stroke and unable to call for help. You are relying on your family - or paid carer - to check on your wellbeing every day. This is going to be much more efficient with sensors around your home. There's lots of software to be written.

  13. Roj Blake Silver badge

    I pretty sure that Elite wasn't a third-party title. It was published by Acornsoft which was a subsidiary of Acorn.

  14. Paul

    isn't this just a copy of AlertMe?

    the alertme kit has PIR sensors, door & window switches, power sensors (so you can check if granny is using the kettle), has GPRS option too.

    suddenly everybody's busy reinventing home monitoring.

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