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“Smarthome Features as a Service” for Older Adults

technologist-holding-the-hand-of-an-older-adult-and-helping-her-to-use-the-controls-for-a-smart-home-in-the-style-of-pointilism

Longevity Explorers have reported on how they have used different smarthome features to improve the quality of life of people with vision impairments, people with hearing difficulties, people with limited mobility, and people facing early cognition impairment — as well as people who just find these new capabilities “fun” and “useful”. However, at present there is a “barrier” to widespread adoption of smarthome features that can benefit older adults — the fact that most of the interesting applications require an element of Do-it-Yourself (“DIY”) capability.

We believe there is a big opportunity to broaden the deployment of these empowering smarthome features to others — by using a “smarthome features as a service” model. This Article explains our thinking, and describes a pilot project we are considering in partnership with one of the Villages in Northern California.

Alexa and My Mother: Learnings for Teaching Older Adults Technology

Over the past few years, I have been the major caregiver for my mother, who lives 350 miles away. This article is partly about my experiences using Alexa to help her, and partly to share some things I have learned about what is important in teaching technology to older adults in ways that … Read more

Amazon Astro Robot

The Amazon “Astro” is a small robot that can autonomously navigate its way around a single-story home much like a robot vacuum using a camera for floor mapping. It is being promoted by Amazon as a “Household Robot for Home Monitoring, with Alexa” and is currently offered for sale only by invitation (as of Nov 2022).

The Senior Moment Alexa Skill can remember this for your mother

One of the great things about Alexa is that she never gets tired of answering the same question. The Alexa Skill Senior Moment may be the perfect fit for your mother's ATM location question. You can ask the Skill to remember the perfect answer to that question. Then all your mother has to say is, "Alexa, open Senior Moment."

Rooms are Never The Right Temperature

My Mom’s heating and cooling HVAC system doesn’t distribute the air well throughout her home

I was running into the same problem in my house, and I was manually turning on floor and ceiling fans, but this can get tiring. I wanted a solution.

Simple Way to Add Outdoor Security Camera

I want a way to add an outdoor security camera to my house, without the bother of batteries, or running electricity outside.

Kitchen and Night Safety for Father-in-law: Smarthome Experiments

I wanted to deploy some smarthome solutions to help my father-in-law who has some physical and cognitive decline. I started with a kitchen safety solution (stove timer), and a night safety solution (lighting). This article explains what I did and why, and how you can do it too. My Life Situation: … Read more

Instant Remote Music Playing

Here is another solution that keeps your Alexa account and that of your parents separate, but still allows you to start music in the house / room of a person with dementia when you want.