My Mom has Alzheimer’s. Don’t know what official stage is, but now she has a full time attendant who sleeps in the next room.
Currently, the situation is this: she still knows she has to pee or poop, but at night, from whatever combo of brain damage and emotion memory of shame (my WAG), she will wake up, sit up in bed, and then simply not move.
I am interested if any kind of motion sensor is available or could be kludged so that her attendant in the next room could be alerted when my Mom does this.
I have a movie image of laser beams (made visible by convenient fog/smoke) positioned at a chosen triggering height …
Thanks,
If you do a Google search for “bed alarms” you’ll find various products that use a pad on the bed to sense if the patient (your mother, in this case) has gotten up. No need for any lasers.
I’m going through the same thing with my grandmother.
It’s a horrific experience.
Unfortunately, for both those options the alarm will go off in the room where the device is located, not the room with the attendant. For my grandmother, alarms can be very confusing and distressing. Instead, you want a device with a separate receiver.
For years she has worn one of these around her neck–we actually have three of those, for a total of six call buttons scattered around the house–but as her dementia has progressed she often forgets to press it.
So, like you suggest, for night-time we have motion sensors attached to her bed.
You want something like this. I ended up using the motion sensors from this kit because the former was out of stock.
During the day she is almost entirely confined to her recliner now. We have an HTPC in the room so I added a webcam and we run Skype to keep an eye on her from elsewhere in the house.
We have all the receivers–three for the buttons, one for the motion sensors–stuck to a piece of cardboard via elastic, so we can easily pass it back and forth as we swap shifts.
The sensor goes one place, the alarm goes with whoever wants to be alerted. Don’t know if it would be perfect for your needs, but $16, it’s a pretty cheap option!
This. I got mine at Harbor Freight for about $13. We have several.
The HF model has high and low volume, and the sensor can be pointed anywhere, so you can be sure to catch her movement.
I install custom burglar alarms in houses, and I can program a DSC security system to do this. You can get what is called a Photo-Electric beam for fairly cheap, aim it above her bed, and wire it into a security system like a motion detector. Essentially its a laser type James Bond thing, just infrared and invisible. You wire it to a specific zone on the security system, and program it to sound a chime or light or bell, whatever 12 volt output device you want. Basically they take 12 volt DC power, and have a normally closed relay that you hit so when it detects that invisible line being broken, it opens up the relay.
It might not be the easiest way, but if you need help with this and want to go this route, I can get you fixed up with how to program it and its not really that hard. Maybe 30 bucks worth of parts to get it going. I have seen the PE beams on ebay for 15 bucks, and the mother board can be old and used, they are fairly easy to come by.
