Need a simple bell application for mother in hospice

General discussion relating to the O2 Joggler, from the default O2 setup, to alternative operating systems and applications.
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kwiatks
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Need a simple bell application for mother in hospice

Post by kwiatks »

My mother is sadly in a hospice but she cannot press the button to attract attention when she is in pain. My idea was a single app that fills the whole screen and when she touches the screen a bell sound is transmitted to the speakers - that's it. At boot up time the app will appear on the screen.

Am also thinking of link up to this -> http://www.makeymakey.com/. Connect makeymakey to Joggler USB port, make the above App respond also to say letter "a" being clicked on the virtual keyboard but send the "a" via the MakeyMakey and so sound the same bell noise if they don't allow the Joggler next to her hand (she can only use one hand now but is very weak).

Where do I go to even start developing such an application ? obviously need it very quickly - appreciate any pointers or offer of help
jim_lewis1
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Re: Need a simple bell application for mother in hospice

Post by jim_lewis1 »

I do wonder if you're not over complicating the issue. Is there a reason not to use a simple battery-switch-buzzer arrangment? The switch can be any normally open type, there must be large ones that would be suitable.

Like this?

http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/illuminated-g ... itch-n08ar
jim_lewis1
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Re: Need a simple bell application for mother in hospice

Post by jim_lewis1 »

and in fact might not this do the trick?

http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/wireless-walk ... bell-l45bn
kwiatks
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Re: Need a simple bell application for mother in hospice

Post by kwiatks »

Many thanks - yes - probably overcomplicating - thanks for the idea - depends if hospice will aloow it since all patients might want one !!! - will see
kwiatks
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Re: Need a simple bell application for mother in hospice

Post by kwiatks »

But then again my mum prob won't be able to click the button on the unit you specified - needs to be super touch senstitive
jim_lewis1
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Re: Need a simple bell application for mother in hospice

Post by jim_lewis1 »

ok, best of luck. Hope things improve for your mum.
jim_lewis1
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Re: Need a simple bell application for mother in hospice

Post by jim_lewis1 »

I think perhaps a capacative touch switch might be more suitable then. No pressure involved, but she does need to be able to touch the target.

You'd need to modify this one as described so that it automatically switches off. It's normally set up to be touch-on, touch-off.

http://www.adafruit.com/products/1375
Juggler
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Re: Need a simple bell application for mother in hospice

Post by Juggler »

If all you want to use the joggler for is as a means to request attention, then there is quite a few solutions, and they are not that complicated. After all, this is a very important purpose, and Jogglers are not really that expensive, so why not ?

I don't know a great deal about the OpenPeak OS or variations of it, but to do what I am about to suggest shouldn't be that involved.

I recently put a joystick on a Joggler and have come across a tool to detect events from devices on the Joggler, including the touchscreen.

As I see it, the app you want would display that it is running and waiting for a touch. When touched an appropriate sound would be made and be made for a set period of time, say 1 minute or whatever. If during this time the screen is touched again, the sound would be turned off and the app would go back to waiting for a touch to make the sound again. Can we consider this to be the must-have requirement ?

I think that with the Ubuntu tools evtest and aplay, and a bit of scripting, this could be a solution.

Of course the sound that is made could be whatever, as aplay will just play a sample. Perhaps you could record a message, that states something like "Could I have assistance please, I am in pain" or something like that. I hope you get the idea.

Some years ago I was quite frankly shocked at the cost of dedicated equipment for people resident in hospitals with limited abilities. And when I had a look inside of the equipment there was nothing special, and it wasn't actually that good. Just some company taking advantage of people at an extremely difficult time in their lives and wanting to have a degree of independence.

Let me know what you think and maybe we can work something out here. Would be useful to know what your technical background is as well,

If someone has made apps for the OpenPeak OS, then your requirements would should be straightforward to be implemented. I haven't, but would give it a go. Just a matter of time. The solution I have in mind would be to use BuZz's Ubuntu base, install the packages needed and have a script and samples for the sound you want.
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pete
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Re: Need a simple bell application for mother in hospice

Post by pete »

Here I started to play with OpenHAB when I read that Oracle has gone into a bit of the point of sale systems. I wondered why I guess.....

Personally first touchscreen playing in the 80's related to a variety of different touchscreen technologies that were plugnplay in commercial configurations. They cannot break. One I played with was based in Unix and ran one server with multiple terminals with basic touchscreen buttons on it.

Back then the whole system booted up with a single floppy. Worked fine; it was very simple though; functional buttons on an amber screen.
OpenHAB.jpg
- Pete
O2 Jogglers running EFI Ubuntu / Squeezeplayer
OpenPeak Voip Telephony / Zigbee tabletops hardware modded with Seabios / RTC / Ethernet ROM edits / SSD drives running XPe for automation screens

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Juggler
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Re: Need a simple bell application for mother in hospice

Post by Juggler »

Looks like creating an app for the OpenPeak OS in flash, may well be reasonably possible. These two links seems to have some good info on them :

http://knolleary.net/2010/05/31/creatin ... der-linux/
http://www.jogglerwiki.com/forum/viewto ... ?f=2&t=665

Again this isn't something I have dabbled in before, but WTH, it's for an important purpose and it would be good to get some Joggler flash app development going...

I should be able to get an ubuntu script solution quicker, as it is actually something I was researching . And developing a flash app, looks interesting too...

Think I have to ask these questions as well : How effective do you think it would be ? Would the nurses/carers actually respond to such a thing ?

Have you considered presenting the problem to the nurses/carers and then seeing what they say. At this point keep quiet about your solution, and see what sort of response they give. Probably best to talk to a person who is a little positive/optimistic generally. Maybe they have some solution. I guess your Mother is not the first person to be in the same situation there. How have other people managed before ? If a nurse/carer suggests that an alternative notifier has been used before or could be possible to be used, then your on a winner. If you keep stressing the problems to the nurse/carer and no solutions / possible solutions from them, then probably better to find someone who would buy into an alternative solution, or you could say your mother can use a tablet to make a noise.

I know from past experience that introducing some technology where the users have not bought into it, doesn't always have the desired outcome.
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pete
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Re: Need a simple bell application for mother in hospice

Post by pete »

You can also look at xAP Flash.
xAP Flash is a touchscreen based home automation control application written originally for the O2 Joggler. Because it is coded in Flash it can also run on many other devices including Android , Windows mobile, WebOS and also standalone or within most web browsers on a PC . It doesn't however run on the Apple iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch as these devices 'famously' don't support Flash. Apple's Safari web browser on a Mac/PC does work well though.
http://www.automatedhome.co.uk/vbulleti ... lash-forum

Here is a flash based automation application snapshot picture running with Firefox on BuZz's Ubuntu 14.04 build. Earlier attempts to run it on Chrome / FF on the Joggler didn't always work. This application has an integrated CCTV flash piece to it. It works fine with Zoneminder and IP HD cams.
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O2 Jogglers running EFI Ubuntu / Squeezeplayer
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Juggler
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Re: Need a simple bell application for mother in hospice

Post by Juggler »

I did quite a bit of research on this, partly out of personal interest to discover an area previously unexplored and partly to help the OP, who had a need for help. As the OP didn't come back and due to moving onto to other things, I didn't share my discoveries. Nothing really astounding, but I haven't seen this area covered much here. So may be of use to other people.

This is just the highlights, and from what I can remember and the bookmarks I made. It was my intention to put an app together and I was looking at getting into flash/action script and having a go at something in there. First things was to understand how to get at the Joggler's touchscreen.

Installing the input-utils package is useful for any input devices - which includes the touch screen. On the Joggler the touchscreen is attached as a USB device.

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install input-utils
Once installed you can see what input devices there are and what they are called :

Code: Select all

lsinput
On the joggler I'm looking at now, it's telling me the touchscreen is /dev/input/event3.

Now to actually see what input from the touch screen can be captured you can try :

Code: Select all

input-events 3
This is useful as it interprets the raw data and shows the time and what actually happened. Still is a bit cryptic, but somewhat better, maybe, than going for the raw data, which can be seen with :

Code: Select all

hexdump /dev/input/event3
You may need to be superuser to run some of the above commands, so just put sudo before it.

For the OP, I was going to write a script that took the raw output, checked for a certain value - the touchscreen being released - and then either turned on or off a sound. For audio, I was going to use the aplay command.

There is quite a bit more to the touchscreen. There is actually a library, and even though it is written with X in mind, I think it can be used without having X installed.

Few relevant links here :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_file
https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentatio ... otocol.txt
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touchscreen

If anyone has anything to share on this, that would be great. This is my first foray into this are, so the above info is patchy and flakey at best, but it may be of use to someone.

It was interesting to see how input devices work in Linux and I started to think of how the touchscreen could be used, even say in Ubuntu base - say to adjust the volume, brightness of maybe some other control.
kwiatks
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Re: Need a simple bell application for mother in hospice

Post by kwiatks »

Sadly not needed anymore since my mother has died but could be a useful thing for other people in the future
Juggler
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Re: Need a simple bell application for mother in hospice

Post by Juggler »

I'm sorry to hear that.
Commodore.White
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Re: Need a simple bell application for mother in hospice

Post by Commodore.White »

Sorry to hear the news. I needed something similar for a visiting aunt who has now been moved to hospital with terminal cancer, she's 91 I used a siemens motion detector and paired it to a compatible wireless doorbell. All she had to do was place her hand near the sensor and the doorbell rang. Simple.
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BuZz
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Re: Need a simple bell application for mother in hospice

Post by BuZz »

my condolences.
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