Monitoring an elderly person with a video camera

[MarkDH102]

My 92 yr old mother in law has just had a fall and ... it's complicated.
I already use a Pi3 with motioneye at home to monitor our driveway, but tbh it is not a very robust solution. It crashes/hangs at random. I need something that "just works" and works all of the time.
I know nothing about "spy" cameras. (She will know that she is being monitored!)
Could someone direct me to a solution that does not involve "the cloud".
I.e It connects directly to a router preferably via WiFi. I dial into it's IP address and see a live feed. It needs to be really robust. For that I guess, read simple!
My mother in law will not be able to operate any aspect of it or "reboot it" if it goes wrong.

[ame]

I've never had a problem with motionEyeOS. Try that instead of plain motionEye.

For your mother, get a pendant and monitoring system from a monitoring company. If she falls she pushes the button on the pendant. It's designed to work, and you are paying people to keep it that way.

In addition you could get a Roomba with a video camera which can roam around and check the entire house to make sure she's ok.

[MarkDH102]

She's got a pendant. Didn't press it. Spent all night on the concrete garage floor. Like I said, it's complicated.
I'm also mindful that she has the odd power cut and I don't want to have a ups particularly. I worry about mine while I'm out! And with a pi2 running pi hole, a router and fibre box plugged in, for 850va it only lasts an hour...
I'll look into motioneyeOS.
Cheers.

[ame]

Ah, sorry to hear that. I do understand it's a problem. Old people especially do not like to push the button as they don't like to be a burden on others, plus it's embarrassing to admit they need help. Unfortunately the situation does not improve by itself and can become quite serious when it is eventually discovered.

How about a PIR in every room? If she is moving around there will be events from the PIRs from time to time. If there are no PIR events for a while then that means no activity, so intervention may be required, unless the last event was the bedroom PIR and it's night time.

Also (and I am loathe to say it) I think the Apple watch can detect falls and summon help.

[MarkDH102]

All good ideas. Unfortunately, she's effectively confined to two rooms now. Living room (now with bed) and kitchen. So PIR's wouldn't work too well. I'll trial run my 1 spare pi2 with motioneyeOS here for few days. See how it copes.
I wouldn't trust her with an Apple watch. She's into pressing buttons on everything at the moment.

[Ernst]

I am using a Raspberry Pi 0 W with motion to monitor my 92 year old father who lives alone about 700 km away from me.
The Pi (in the official raspberry case with the official camera) is glued to the wall and points to the stairlift / passage to the kitchen.
Video is not active, just logging events. Every day at 18:00 I receive an email showing the events logged.
For maintenance the remote Pi is configured to setup a reverse SSH tunnel to a Pi with me so that I do not have to open ports on his router.
To avoid problems the remote Pi is booted during the night so that motion and the SHH tunnel is reset,
on reboot an email message is send to me to confirm that the system is still alive.

Code: Select all

Dec 27 08:16:10 Motion detected - starting event 1
Dec 27 08:18:42 Motion detected - starting event 2
Dec 27 08:43:31 Motion detected - starting event 3
Dec 27 09:28:12 Motion detected - starting event 4
Dec 27 09:30:18 Motion detected - starting event 5
Dec 27 09:57:47 Motion detected - starting event 6
Dec 27 10:01:01 Motion detected - starting event 7
Dec 27 10:03:19 Motion detected - starting event 8
Dec 27 10:09:21 Motion detected - starting event 9
Dec 27 10:11:55 Motion detected - starting event 10
Dec 27 10:35:03 Motion detected - starting event 11
Dec 27 10:39:34 Motion detected - starting event 12
Dec 27 10:41:19 Motion detected - starting event 13
Dec 27 11:45:19 Motion detected - starting event 14
Dec 27 12:09:13 Motion detected - starting event 15
Dec 27 12:17:24 Motion detected - starting event 16
Dec 27 12:22:50 Motion detected - starting event 17
Dec 27 12:28:25 Motion detected - starting event 18
Dec 27 12:47:30 Motion detected - starting event 19
Dec 27 12:49:06 Motion detected - starting event 20
Dec 27 15:38:22 Motion detected - starting event 21
Dec 27 15:40:30 Motion detected - starting event 22
Dec 27 15:46:20 Motion detected - starting event 23
Dec 27 15:50:25 Motion detected - starting event 24
Dec 27 15:57:56 Motion detected - starting event 25
Dec 27 16:01:22 Motion detected - starting event 26
Dec 27 16:21:26 Motion detected - starting event 27
Dec 27 16:45:25 Motion detected - starting event 28
Dec 27 17:08:27 Motion detected - starting event 29

[MarkDH102]

Ernst.
Many thanks for that.
I guess you use Cron to reboot?
Has it ever failed to restart.
Unfortunately, I do need video so it will have to be a pi2 upwards.

[CharlyDelta]

I was in the same situation last year and had installed a camera. All you need is a Zero W, the Rpi camera, a box, the power supply and as program, https://elinux.org/RPi-Cam-Web-Interface.
Then, a https://www.noip.com/ account and it does the job. If there is a power cut, the whole thing restarts automatically.

[swampdog]

Audio? A relation monitors her father with a camera she has internally fixed to the inside of a front window pointing down the entranceway. That way she can tell who comes & goes but not wind him up by watching him. It's some commercial product she can use her iphone for (she's a non-techie). That's unimportant because it also does audio thus even when some idiot knocked it off the window cleaning she could tell who did it and that her father was okay.

So perhaps a microphone in each place where she will be will suffice?

[MarkDH102]

Unfortunately, things have moved on somewhat in a short space of time.
My mother in law has now had to go into a care home.
Where ironically, apart from in her room, cameras monitor all the time.
And she has a pressure mat so when she gets out of bed someone is with her pretty instantaneously.

[swampdog]

Apologies. Recent events must still be raw.