A Humanitarian Engineering Problem

zrosener asks: "A have a friend who has ALS (Stephen Hawking's ailment), a particularly nasty disease in which her motor neurons deteriorate over time, slowly waylaying her. She is in pretty bad shape now, and her movement is restricted to moving her eyes, and very limited (1 inch in each direction) hand movement. She has very light bell that she uses to wake up her husband when she needs assistance, but as her strength wanes it is becoming less and less effective. She is afraid at night now that if something were to go wrong she would not be able to rouse her husband. My challenge to you is to design a noise-making-husband-alerting device cheaply and quickly assembled from strip mall parts (Radioshack, Walmart, etc.) that she could use with her extremely restricted movement. Buttons are out of the questions, as are anything that requires gripping. Analog answers are encouraged too! Please email all suggestions or post them."

Well...

[A Rabid Tibetan Yak]

...there's always this [theonion.com].

Re:biofeedback device?

[skookum]

And as an added bonus, you can also rid yourself of thetans and save the $50,000 cleansing fee, or whatever it is that the Church of Scientology charges for hooking up a multimeter to your skin...

"If something goes wrong"?

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly can go wronger?

Use a kazoo.

[Anonymous Coward]

Her husband should just place a kazoo in her mouth before they go to sleep. She needs help, just exhale real hard.

Re:My idea - steal it and make the world better.

[praxim]

Hold your breath for a certain amount of time (or die)

"Ok, this is really easy to operate: all you have to do is die..."