Ask Slashdot: Bulletproof Video Conferencing For Alzheimers Home? 194
Milo_Mindbender writes I'm trying to find a bulletproof near zero maintenance video conferencing client for shared use in an Alzheimers living facility. It's used so the patients can regularly see their relatives who are often out of town. Most everything I've tried on PC or Mac requires tweeks/updates from time to time to keep it working, not good in a place where there are no computer savvy people. It looks like most of the low cost dedicated boxes have died out too. The ideal setup will be turnkey with little-to-no maintenance and if possible support auto-answering calls from approved users. It needs to be compatible with video conferencing apps the relatives can easily get on phone/tablet/pc such as Skype, Facetime, Hangouts...etc. Any suggestions?
Keep it COTS! (Score:4, Informative)
You're dealing with nontechnical folks at both ends... You want ease of use and commercial customer support
Easy answer: Smart TV w/ Skype camera. Here's Samsung's version [samsung.com]
FaceTime (Score:5, Informative)
An iPad with FaceTime. Sorry, but this is really the simplest one out there. Setup an MDM on it for remote management.
Create an app that posts family pictures that with a click will call them. Or it can hook into the fingerprint reader and call the right family. Or, get a personal iPad for each patient and set it up in their room and have the MDM only allow Facetime to the family.
If you are talking about hundreds of iPads, then even Apple will help you setup all this.
Online, free, very simple solution (Score:3, Informative)
https://appear.in/
No account is necessary. You only need to send the other party (or parties) the name of the room.
Firefox, Chrome of Opera are currently necessary I believe.
Service is free, there is currently no ad. I don't know what is there business model and how long they'll be able to sustain it, but it looks like they got video-conferencing right.
Re:FaceTime (Score:2, Informative)
Right... cause everyone HAS to hold an iPad to use it. Cause iPads can't be plugged in like TVs. Cause iPads can't integrate into a sound system. Cause Alzheimers patients far enough along to require assisted living will remember how to undo any channel changes or plug cords that get pulled.
Personally, I don't integrate into Apple products in my house or my families'. I have a mix of Androids, Cromecast, Windows, and Apple. However, I have seen the pure iPhone side and when you see the requirements of the submitter, there really is no solution that fits it better than Apple. The submitter doesn't need the flexibility, features, and cost savings at the cost of complexity that the other solutions offer.
Is the iPad the perfect solution, no. But for what the submitter wants, it is far better than anything else on the market. Overall, from a simplistic ecosystem view point, Apple just does it better. Shit just works. There really is no close challenger. Samsung has no focus in this direction, and Microsoft is probably 4-5 years away.
Am doing this currently (Score:5, Informative)
Forget trying to set it up for the other residents as a group. The staff and administration will likely freak out over the privacy implications and HIPAA laws or whatever. Offer to help other families do it on a one-by-one basis as I outline below:
My mother is in a rest home for the past few months and she's lost the ability to do much of anything on a computer.
Still, we manage to video conference with her every day, with almost no problems and no work required on her part.
The cost was negligible and the setup trivial. Here's what we did:
Scrounge an old laptop. For this, my brother donated a late-model thinkpad. It runs some version of Windows, currently. If it gets a virus, I'll wipe it and install Ubuntu, but it's been fine so far.
Install Skype, with an account created for the elderly person. Set it so that only people on their friends list are allowed to call. Set it to auto-answer incoming calls. Add family members to the person's friends list, but do so carefully, as anyone you add will be able to pop on any time they like.
Add TeamViewer, in case you need to log in and restart Skype, add someone, or even start a movie on Netflix or YouTube.
Our setup has worked well in practice for two years, including scenarios like talking to ambulance crews and LifeAlert, before she went into the home and talking with her doctors and other caregivers at the home. She spends time every day visiting with an infant grandson she hasn't yet met, so it's had a huge impact on the quality of her life.
Some people will complain that they don't like Skype, or they want to use FaceTime, but another family member isn't on IOS or whatever, but by now, everyone knows that if they want to call mom, they just use Skype.
Re:example of "dork" thinking ruining tech (Score:2, Informative)
Not sure what your point is, other than going absolutely abeshit on the wrong guy. The magic rainbows aren't directed at the original questioner, but at the doofus who I was answering.
And he is out of luck if he expects a no maintenance cheap solution exists, there is no such thing. Even going iPad proprietary will be a headache as soon as iOS 8 hoes out.
Oh yeah, and let me finish off by pointing out you just went full retard by doing the exact thing you say I was doing.