ELDERLY-SOS – Emergency Alarm for the Elderly

A well thought-out system for care of the elderly, 25 Mar. 2013

By 

Kevin O’Byrne (Berkshire, England) –

  

I don’t often write reviews even though I often rely on them myself, so I felt I ought to be the first to rate this product as I took a gamble on it. Having just set it up over the weekend, it is a nice piece of technology and so far works well – clearly I can’t comment on reliability yet and it has only been running for 3 days. It can be set to automatically dial up to 5 phone numbers and send txt (SMS) messages to up to another 5 phones. On getting an alarm signal (either by pressing the big red button on the main unit or the button on the lanyard or wrist-mounted fob) an SMS is sent immediately to all numbers in memory, and the first phone number is rung. If the phone is engaged or remains unanswered, the unit will dial the next number, and so on. Note that if you have an answerfone, the unit will see that as a response and not ring the next number – but this is as expected. There is no verbal message (the SMS does say ALARM and tells you which sensor has triggered) – when you pick up the phone you tend to hear the alarm going off at the other end because it automatically engages a microphone for you to listen in. The beeper then goes off, so you can listen for other sounds. The unit can apparently be extended to be used for two-way communication but not as supplied. Naturally, you would tend to call the person on a normal landline to check they’re ok. You can reset the alarm remotely if the person cannot get to the disarm button on the main unit.

The main unit takes a standard mobile phone SIM card, which should be setup (activated etc) inside a normal phone before fitting it into the device. There are none of the buttons you would find on a normal phone – all settings are made by calling the device from another phone and entering a password followed by a series of numbers and the hash key on your phone. This way you set the numbers to be called and several other settings. It can also be programmed using SMS messages – I simply phoned it from a landline and the setup was very easy following the supplied instructions.

The main unit is mains powered (comes with a typical ‘wall wart’ AC adaptor) and there is a backup battery to retain settings in the event of a power failure. Better still, if the power goes off (or it gets unplugged!) it will send a warning SMS, and then tell you when the power is connected again – very good thinking. You can also call the device, enter a secondary password and listen in to background noises from the built-in microphone. Again an nice feature for peace of mind if, like me, you are watching out for your elderly parent.

One word of advice. There is a reference in the user manual to a battery backup switch. This is OFF by default and you need to turn it on after fitting the SIM card and plugging the unit into the mains. If you don’t, nothing powers up. The issue is that although mentioned, the diagram doesn’t show where the switch is. I was about to call to say it was dead on arrival when I saw the tiny little black switch poking out from the side, bottom left, of the printed circuit board (i.e. not from the case of the unit but inside). The switch is actually mounted on the hidden side of the PCB, so it’s far from obvious. Use a thin pen or screwdriver to carefully flick the switch across. Other than that, the manual is relatively thorough and quite well written for what I assume is a Chinese made product – certainly not the gobbledegook you sometimes get.

There is a status light which flashes once every three seconds to show the device is ‘seeing’ the GSM signal. There is also a permanently lit red power led (which can be remotely switched off if the unit is being mounted where it might be distracting), plus a green ‘monitor’ led (shows if the microphone is active/someone is listening in) and a red ‘alarm triggered’ led.

The unit can be extended for use with a separate fire/smoke detector. The supplied wireless fob is big enough to handle easily without being too cumbersome – it can held around the neck on the supplied lanyard, or held on the wrist like a watch – and the central button has a tactile feel (raised pimples in a circle). The range seems good – with the main unit upstairs at the front of our house, which is quite large, I was able to trigger it from the kitchen downstairs at the back of the house. As my mother lives in a bungalow I’m hoping, if carefully sited, it should track her throughout the house and when she goes outside to the greenhouse, as that is where she is prone to stumble.

So far I’m pleased with this – it’s a cracking piece of technology on paper, seems well thought out and looks fairly well built, but the reliability is the big question mark and only time will tell. I would recommend it – the price, for what you’re getting here, doesn’t seem unreasonable, and if it proves to be reliable over time then it will have been a good buy.

Worth adding that the seller, while…

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Does the job perfectly, 15 Jun. 2014

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