If you fall in the bathroom, you may be in for a terrible time trying to raise a neighbour. To counter this, “Fall Alert” devices, worn on the wrist or around the neck, can be rented for about $40 per month and up. There are also free apps for smart phones that use the smartphone’s accelerometer . This 2014 article from National Institute of Health in the USA gives great info, concluding “… the performance and usability of current systems remain limited…” But if you carry a smart phone, you might google “google play fall alert” and try out a free app anyway.
Recognizing that phones are not well suited to showering, I thought a different approach might work for me — a hazard count-down timer “app” that I click before entering a hazardous situation, like a shower.
If I do not cancel the timer, an email is sent to my emergency contact(s) when the timer times-out.
I have the timer set for one hour now, and the timer beeps after 40 minutes to remind me to cancel the timer if I am OK.
This works fine using Chrome on a PC, but getting a web page in chrome to beep on an android phone is a chore:
Open the chrome browser and type “about:flags” in the address/search bar. From the 3 vertical dots top right, use “Find in page”, and type “gesture req” and toggle the setting so that it shows enable. See these screenshots of my android phone.
If you want to use this app, find other club members to use as an emergency contact, and email me their name. I have been thinking of setting up the records in the member profile that each member can edit, but that work won’t be done if there is no interest.
A similar subscription service calls the elderly subscriber every morning to check if they are ok. Why not have a repeating timer, set to say 10am, that you can cancel if you are ok, but that emails an emergency contact if the timer expires.
You might wonder why the app sends an email instead of phoning your emergency contact. There are low cost call services but they rule out emergency use in their terms and conditions.
Last but not least, as this involves life situations, I take no responsibility should you use these ideas and they fail to bring help in time.
