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The Nest Saga, Part III: The indoor cameras

June 27, 2017

Graphic: Reads "The Nest Saga, Part III: Nest Indoor Cameras" with an image of a house and icons representing various technologies inside of the house

Installing the Nest Indoor Cameras

I took my time putting up the indoor cameras once I installed the other two things. Internally I struggled with the indoor cameras because I wanted to respect my grandma’s privacy. We had many conversations about where to put the cameras. We wanted to avoid her bedroom and didn’t want any cameras pointing directly in her face.

More than that, I had convinced myself that I didn’t really want to see what my grandma does during the day. Two things happened that changed my mind and lit a fire under my bum to install the indoor cameras.

  1. My mom attended a dementia simulation. They gave her some things in her shoes to simulate mobility problems, gloves on her hands to simulate arthritis and decline in manual dexterity, glasses that mess up your vision, and headphones that sound like they’re stuck between two radio stations. After what she shared with me, I decided to see if there was a video I could watch that could give me an idea of what she experienced. I found this news story (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL_Gq7Shc-Y – Warning: the video may provoke some uncomfortable emotions) where they did the same thing with two family members of aging loved ones with dementia. I decided that it was probably a good idea to put the cameras up so I could monitor my grandma’s behavior and health.
  2. My grandma fell. She knocked over this new table on wheels (like the ones they have in the homes). She stood up to gather up some of what fell on the floor and fell herself.Instead of pressing her medical alert button, she found her phone and started calling everyone she could think of. The problem was, they were all her church people. I found out from one of these people that she fell, and it wasn’t even the person who came and picked her up off the floor! She did not call me. I think she did not want me to know, because she specifically said she didn’t want to press her medical alert button.

    This is not the first time something like this has happened. When she went to the hospital last winter after her first stint at home, church people started coming out of the woodwork telling me she had been calling them to help her up after she fell during the day while I was at work. Out of complete ignorance and a lack of common sense, they were unaware that they should let the primary caregiver know that this was taking place. And she would forget to tell me that she fell, or worse, purposely try to hide it from me.

    At a visitation for a family friend last summer, I happened to be standing next to this lady who knew my grandma. It was a very long line to the front, because this man was beloved to our community. We started talking about everything that had been going on and to my horror, my grandma had called her and asked her to help her up. The lady I had been standing next to told me my grandma didn’t even know who she was when she called her or when she came to help her up. I was furious at my grandma for hiding this from me, and I was angry at the lady for not trying to get in touch with me to let me know this happened!I finally had to have a ‘Come to Jesus’ with her. I told her that more than anyone else, I want her to be home. I am busting my butt to help her stay home! I need to know what is going on. Every single time she has had a spell of falls, there was something wrong with her (a gall bladder 4 times the normal size, a urinary tract infection, vision problems). If I don’t know that she is falling, I may not be aware that something is wrong with her and I cannot help her get appropriate medical care. I reminded her that she needed to use her medical alert device and we started practicing using it so she could be comfortable with it.

    A year later, we are going through the exact same thing. This time, she called someone she knows she is not supposed to call, because he is also elderly and is placing himself at risk by helping her. I called every single person and asked them to tell her to press her medical alert button if she falls and then to call me right away.Then, we had pretty much the same exact ‘Come to Jesus.’ This time, I told her that if she is not going to even press her button when she falls, we have to have a back up way of knowing that she needs help.  And then I installed the cameras.

Following the instructions in the package, I installed the cameras in less than an hour. I had Grandma help me, pulling the app up on her phone and telling me what she could see so I could stand up on a chair and put them on the wall. We put the cameras in three key places: 1) the hallway coming out of her room, 2) in the far corner of the living room behind her, and 3) in the kitchen.

Now I can have peace of mind being able to look in on her while I’m not with her. I can also see it coming in handy in the future too as potential strangers come in to provide in home support.

The Nest dashboard inside the app is very user friendly. Nest works great at night. It sends you notifications, which you can fully customize. Notifications are active on my device and hers that someone is outside, but I am the only one who is notified of movement inside of the house.

Do you use an off-shelf system of remote monitoring with someone you care for? Share your experience in the comments!

· Keeping Grandma Safe

The Nest Saga, Part II: The #Nest Outdoor Cam

June 20, 2017

Nest Outdoor Camera

The second piece of Nest equipment I installed was the outdoor camera. Following the instructions included in the box, I installed the camera in less than an hour.

Photo: Nest outdoor camera freshly installedThe reason we got an outdoor camera is because I caught my grandma saying, “Come in!” as soon as she heard a knock at the door, not knowing who it was, and letting people she didn’t remember in her house. One time last summer, I was barbecuing in the back and came in to find some lady in her house. Once I was wise to what was going on, I realized it was an old neighbor of hers. But when the lady walked out the door, my grandma turned to me and asked, “Who was that?”

The first thing we did was practice what to do when someone comes to the door. We have been practicing frequently so that she gets the hang of it. From opening the app when she hears the doorbell or a knock at the door to saying, “Can I help you?” or “You’ll have to come back later when Rachel is here,” we are working on knowing what to do when someone wants to come in.

I created my own Nest account and connected it to hers. Now, any time someone comes to the house or my grandma opens the front door, I get a notification. It gives me great peace of mind that I can tell a random stranger thinking they can prey on her or someone who doesn’t have any business there to go f#@* themselves.

At first, I didn’t think she would like it very much, but one day, her phone died from her watching the camera outside all day. And then I heard her tell someone she knows that I got it for her so she doesn’t have to answer the door if she doesn’t want to. Now, she watches whats happening outside all the time. She knows when someone gets there so she can start heading toward the door to let them in. And I definitely feel safer being able to visibly see who is coming to her door and in and out of her house.

Graphic: Smiley face to left, text to right says, "Smile, you're on camera!"

Do you use an off-shelf system of remote monitoring with someone you care for? Share your experience in the comments!

· Keeping Grandma Safe

The Nest Saga, Part I: Installing the #Nest Smart Thermostat

June 13, 2017

Graphic: Reads "The Nest Saga, Part I: Installing the #Nest Smart Thermostat" with an image of a house and icons representing various technologies inside of the house

Installing the Nest Learning Thermostat

9 times out of 10 when my grandma was having trouble with the AC/furnace, it was because she didn’t have the thermostat set right. She was constantly testing my patience over the thermostat. Not to mention several falls were caused by sleepy trips to the thermostat in the middle of the night.

I successfully installed the Nest thermostat for my grandma all by myself. Her heater refused to come on after a spell of warm weather. Thinking that the thermostat might be the problem, I seized the opportunity to install the new one. It literally took me less than 30 minutes. Even the technician from Stuck’s Heating and Cooling who visited to fix the furnace after I installed it said I did a good job. (The problem with the furnace was a thermocouple/sensor issue, thank you very much :D)

When I called her to wake her up in the morning a couple days after we installed it, she said she couldn’t get it warm in there. I pulled it up on my phone and she had the AC turned on. I was able to turn the heat on so it could warm back up. It was at that moment I knew that it was worth every penny.

 

Benefits besides peace of mind and cool features I’ve noticed since installing the thermostat: 

  • The Nest thermostat on the wall is easier to use than a standard thermostat (you just turn the temperature up and down) when Grandma forgets to adjust the temperature with her phone
  • The screen on the thermostat lights up when someone gets close to it so you can clearly see what temperature it is set on and what mode it is in.
  • The thermostat tells you how long it is going to take to warm up/cool down to the temperature you have specified
  • Nest sends you a monthly report giving you information about your energy usage at a glance 

 

Photo: Photo of Nest Smart Thermostat turning on!

· Keeping Grandma Safe

Using technology to keep Grandma safe

May 30, 2017

Graphic: Reads "Using Technology to Keep Grandma Safe" with an image of a house and icons representing various technologies inside of the house

Back when my grandma was in rehabilitation at a nursing facility before she settled at home for good this time, I made a list of demands. As the person primarily responsible for providing her care, I needed help from the outside to help her stay at home before I completely lost my mind.

I had two main demands:

  1. We were going to look into finding someone we could pay to spend a little time with her during the day so she had some companionship and a ride and assistance at appointments as well as help her carry out some daily tasks, like cleaning and cooking.
  2. We were going to start using technology to help me ensure her safety. At the time, I only mentioned a medical alert device like Life Alert, but in my mind, I knew that one day, I wanted to use the off-shelf technology that is quickly allowing everyday people to turn their houses into smart homes.

We got her first smart phone last summer. Even though I went in with an iPhone in mind, the T-Mobile rep sold Grandma this cheap Samsung Grand Prime phone, a cheap Galaxy knockoff because we could flip it into “easy mode.” My grandma had a lot of trouble getting used to smart phone technology, mainly the touch screen aspect of it. I knew that convincing her to technologize her life was not going to be an easy feat.

 

Convincing Grandma

Instead of describing the cool things she could do with all of this technology, I laid it out into a proposal for her, complete with prices and why I thought she should get the technology in question.

View the full proposal

Recently, the screen on the phone was cracked (from someone– not me– haphazardly throwing her walker in the back seat with her phone in the pocket of her old walker caddy). I used that to my advantage and took her to buy a new and better phone. We needed a better phone to implement the Nest suite. There was no using Nest in easy mode using the Grand Prime.

 

Getting Grandma an iPhone

I am not an Apple user myself, but I have owned an iPad for five years now. I wanted her to get an iPhone for two reasons:

  1.  Apple products are intuitive and easy to use, and
  2. As I looked around at my grandma’s friends and fellow church-goers, I noticed a lot of them owned iPhones. I started seeing visions of Grandma Facetiming with her friends and getting help from Siri.

My grandma is still learning how to use her iPhone, but I can assure you, since we switched to iOS, I have received a lot less complaints about not understanding how to use her phone.

 

Help! I’ve Fallen…

It took a few weeks and a couple falls where she had to crawl to the phone before she agreed to the Medical Alert, and a few months more passed before she even used the Medical Alert when she fell, despite practice and constant reminders, but we have been using it successfully for over a year now.

 

Making Grandma’s Home Smart

Why did we choose Nest? Well, the answer is pretty simple. I did not want to have separate apps and devices, when I could buy into one suite of apps and equipment. Sure, I’ve heard good things about the Ring Video Doorbell and the Peep Smart Doorbell, but viewing and managing the cameras  and thermostat in one place was the major factor in deciding on Nest. We ordered them all at once, and I installed them one-by-one over the following weeks.

 

Follow along with me in future posts for the specific insights on selecting a medical alert system and installing the Nest thermostat, outdoor and inside cameras.

· Keeping Grandma Safe

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