X-Message-Number: 6979 Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 15:41:42 -0700 From: Hara Ra <> Subject: Lifeline Project Update Life Line Bracelet Project, Update #1, September 25, 1996 --------------------------------------------------------- Contact me at: Intro: ====== I have not spent much time on this project for personal reasons having to do with my health. Good reasons, not bad ones, such as exploring the best and most exciting relationship of my life! I also had a total system crash, lost all of my files, and now that I am back on the net, I request ALL of you who are interested in this project to PLEASE EMAIL ME so I can create a cc list for future updates and internal communications. Please include a word or two indicating your degree of interest in this project. Updates will be posted on Cryonet, and some of this material will appear in Cryonics. Comments and feedback are invited. This project depends on your input. I will quite happily go ahead and do something, but for it to work well, it must fit your needs.... BTW, donations are cheerfully accepted. Email me privately concerning this. Overview: ========= During the summer of 1995 a cryonicist died in his apartment and was not discovered for almost a week. His brain had turned into soup. Many of us live alone, often with less than daily contact with friends. A device which monitors life signs and signals cessation of same would be extremely useful. The Life Line Bracelet Project is intended to remedy this situation. The ideal device would be implanted in the body and would monitor several physiological variables, such as blood O2 level, heartbeat and respiration. Upon detection of a critical situation it would signal a satellite network which would inform a monitoring person of the situation. Said person would then activate the appropriate procedures. This is not too far away, my personal guess is 7 - 10 years. There is currently rising interest in the trade press concerning medical warning devices connected to cellular phones, satellite phones, the internet, etc. Articles have appeared pointing out that "press a button to get help" devices are inadequate. (Your basic button device is available from Radio Shack for about $150.00 plus a $15/mo subscription fee.) There is a strong connection with the personal security market, ie, devices which can call for help in other situations, such as accidents and crimes. This also integrates with the market targeted by PDAs and advanced beepers capable of responding to email. I will be pursuing these leads soon, and think that the current priority is to create a basic system specifically designed for cryonicists needs. It will take several years to organize the required agreements, vendors, etc, to realize a system which is integrated with the personal safety and medical telemonitoring markets. I see this project as developing in incremental stages. The idea is to create something minimal and useful and then to improve it, with the eventual goal to become integrated with the markets mentioned above. The stages are described below. Note: ----- It is easy to imagine scenarios in which the proposed solutions won't work. I am of course interested in these. I'll mention one as an example: Many of us are adverse to wearing the bracelet, let alone something more massive. Many of us dislike carrying stuff around, which the solutions below require. The solution is to wire one's environment, to live inside of the device, so to speak. Since many folk die in their sleep, a bed motion detector could be built. Then, what about an accident in the back yard?? However, the purpose here is to find a reasonably useful beginning and then make improvements. Stage 1: The Timer Box and Base Station --------------------------------------- The easiest way to detect life is to ask. A small box, about the size of a beeper is worn or kept nearby. It has several buttons with different timeout intervals, from 10 minutes to 24 hours. When the timer expires, the box beeps and the user presses one of the buttons. When a button is pressed, the timers are reset, with the interval selected by the button pressed. If no button is pressed within a short interval, say 5 minutes, the box sends a radio signal to the Base Station. The timer box has a range appropriate to unlicensed low signal radio, typically about 50-100 feet. The Base Station dials a preset phone number and transmits a short message, such as the name of the client or their phone number. An on-call person wears a beeper attached to the preset phone number. This person phones the client to determine the situation. A non responding client activates the cryonics alert process. The initial timer box will contain a clock calendar chip, a cmos microprocessor such as the PIC, and a radio transmitter taken from the Radio Shack medical alert product, modified for relay activation. The initial base station will be the unmodified Radio Shack product. (I intend to design the box so that it can be upgraded mostly be replacing the software ROM.) A number of variations are possible here. The details will be provided in another document (which will also be posted to Cryonet, and later available from me via email). Stage 2: Sensors, Smart Boxes, Base Station with Modem ------------------------------------------------------ AMP manufactures a flexible piezoelectric plastic strip in a variety of forms which is extremely sensitive to flexure with a very wide dynamic range. (Demo kit available from Edmund Scientific for $130.00) A number of manufacturers sell low power FM radio transmitters for amateur surveillance applications. When visiting Alcor, I was able to interface the strip to one of these transmitters. The material also comes in the form of a coaxial cable. Imagine a bracelet somewhat thicker than the silver one with this cable replacing the chain. As the body moves the flexure of the cable transmits a very low power FM signal a few feet to a Smart Box. The Smart Box is essentially an upgraded Timer Box. It analyses the motion signal for cessation of motion. The cable can be removed from the bracelet by a strong tug. Doing so activates a "Help Me" signal instead of an "I'm Dead" message. A panic button is also provided on the Smart Box. Upon cessation of motion the Smart Box beeps, and if not responded to, transmits a data string via radio to the Base Station. The Base Station then makes one or more telephone calls via the modem. One or more of the telephone calls is answered by a computer assigned to this task, and the computer notifies the on-call person. Stage 3: Mobility ----------------- The Base Station is integrated with a cellular phone which is kept nearby at all times. It may also be reasonable to integrate the Base Station with the Smart Box at this point. Stage 4: General Integration ---------------------------- By now it is expected that negotiations with the personal safety device manufacturers are successful and some kind of device akin to Dick Tracy's watch is under development. For More Details ================ As mentioned above, a more technical document is forthcoming. O---------------------------------O | Hara Ra <> | | Box 8334 Santa Cruz, CA 95061 | O---------------------------------O Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=6979