We’re all getting closer to the grave each day. A sobering thought, to be sure.
The wife has medical conditions that make day-to-day living interesting, in the Chinese curse sense of the word. She has trouble getting around, and has had several heart attacks over the last few years. I wonder about being able to keep up with all her needs.
Finding things to make it easier to care for her is always beneficial, in my opinion.
I was thinking that it’d be nice to have an android that could help take care of her. The ‘droid could get her meals, make sure she takes her meds, help her get around the house, that sort of thing. Regrettably science hasn’t caught up to science fiction yet, so getting an android helper is out.
Then I started thinking about home automation. There are systems that you a set up that will tun your lights on for you, adjust your thermostat, and other household functions. That would be useful, but I think I would need something more than just turning on the lights at 6:00 PM every day.
Then I remembered reading about an open source project called Mister House. This was a project that put home automation on steroids. Basic systems like I mentioned above do simple things. The Mister House system lets you program your automated house letting you do many more things. You could set up the system to know where your car is and open your garage door automatically when you’re five minutes from home. You can use voice commands, the same as you would do with Alexa or Cortana, and have your house turn on the stove, or set your TV to record your favorite program, or give you the local weather report, or even tell you jokes. It has text-to-speech capability as well so it an answer you when you ask it to do something, giving you verification that the task has been carried out.
The project was originally started back in 1998 by Bruce Winter. Since then, a number of other developers have since contributed to the project, and it has grow i it’s capabilities. The information on the website I noted above seems to be out-of-date but the GitHub repository seems to be more recent.
There is another project semi-related to this for building a smart mirror. This ‘magic mirror’ has a computer behind a one-way piece of glass, so it looks like the information is displaying on the mirror. This can show you emails, tweets, the weather, motivational sayings, whatever. Combine that with something like the Mister House project and I think you’d have a winning combination.
Now, none of this will help my wife get around, or get her meals, but it can do things like alert me if she needs help. The wife has a habit of talkig to me when I’m in a room on the other side of the house. I might be able to hear that she is speaking but I have no idea wat she is saying. She could tell the smart house what she needs and it could relay it to me in another room. If she wants to watch something on TV, she can tell the smart house what she wants and it can put it on for her. It could help us keep track of taking her meds and keep a record of it for us. It could let us know when it is time to reorder her meds. It can help us keep track of her various doctor appointments. In the morning when I get ready to walk the dogs I could have the smart mirror give me a run down of the day’s events. There are more uses but I’m not going to list them all out here.
This won’t be anything I’d have set up and running anytime soon. I need to do some research on other home automation systems, and the hardware that goes with them. But starting to plan out a system now will pay off later when I am ready to get it set up.
If you know anything about home automation systems, my Hordeling, hit reply and let me know. I could use a few pointers.
If you’d like to support my efforts, why not buy me a chocolate chip cookie through my Ko-Fi page? https://ko-fi.com/jhusum
My first thought is that this whole conversation falls under the “be careful what you wish for” category. There are now all sorts of “smart” devices and “smart home” systems out there. And, like everything else in a capitalist culture, they are designed first and foremost to make money for the manufacturers. Do your research, and make sure you get something you really need, and not something designed simply to appeal to the massive demand for more novelty.
Three and a half years ago I was living in a nice apartment. Not luxurious, but definitely nice. I lived there for 5 years, and I enjoyed it. Then one summer they installed a “smart home” system in each unit. I could do several things remotely now. I could reset my thermostat. I could turn certain lights on and off. I could do all this from my desk in front of my computer, instead of walking 5 whole feet to the thermostat. Granted, I could also reset my thermostat and turn off my lights from any internet connected device anywhere, but I had never felt any urge to do this when I was away from home (though I can see how this would be useful to some people).
There was a system for detecting water leaks in the kitchen, though I had never had any sort of issue with water leaks before.
There was one really nifty thing. It would lock and unlock my door. I didn’t need a key anymore, I just entered a combination on a keypad at the door. This, I thought, made the whole thing worth it even though I never used any other feature.
Then, when the time came to renew my lease, instead of the usual $20 – $30 per month rent increase that I was used to, my rent was jacked up $200 per month.
I am now getting ready to move for the 3rd time in the last 3 years, and I am hoping that this time the place I’m moving into will be better than, instead of worse than, the place I’m leaving.
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