Help - Wearable Bluetooth Button

Electronics
#1

I am starting work on a project, and I could use some help/suggestions.

My mother suffered a stroke early this year and was left mostly blind and with severe memory issues. She is home alone during the day (someone stops in to check on her throughout the day) and sometimes will get lost trying to get back from the bathroom to her chair.

I thought I might be able to solve this and a few other problems in a creative way, and want to give it a try. I am designing a Raspberry Pi powered hub that will sit on the top of her lounge chair, emit chirps or beeps, and strobe a pair of adafruit neopixel rings so that she can locate the chair. The hub will do other things, but I am wanting to start small and solve one problem at a time.

My problem has been “how to trigger” the device. I would like to make a small armband or pendant she could wear, press a button to activate the device. I was thinking of using something with bluetooth to communicate with the raspberry PI since the furthest she could get from the chair would be 30ish feet. The band or pendant needs to be small, preferably have a rechargeable power source or small inexpensive battery. I have been looking around, but I just haven’t quite found the right fit yet.

I am looking for any help or suggestions on what kind of controller/button/power source I could use for the band or pendant. It doesn’t have to be bluetooth, that is just the first thing that came to mind. Any ideas?

TIA!

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#2

Bluetooth remote shutter (usually marketed for smartphone photography).

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#3

Looking into it now, thank you!

#4

Look at Tiles too. The tech is parallel to what you are looking for.

A recommendation might be for the sensor she wears to “trigger” the chair after she is gone for 3 to 5 minutes.

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#5

Nike Pod is what you want

Not a DIY option and possibly too complicated

Apple Watch has some new hardware features around fall detection and heart rate monitoring as well as location services.

My concern is the software is not there yet and likely she will be unable to read the watch as well as you will have to charge it at a much higher frequency than the Nike Pod. The goodnews is you can monitor afar.

https://seniorhousingnews.com/2018/09/12/apple-makes-play-seniors-new-smartwatch-features/

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#6

I’d prolly use an esp8288 or esp32 for the microcontroller in the pendant. About the same size as a nano but comes with WiFi (and I think BT too, but I’m not sure) built into the board.

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