Month: August 2020

Thank you to everyone who commented on whether they would like phone call alerts, similar to those provided by Embrace or SeizAlarm. Quite a few users said they would like to have phone call alerts to supplement the SMS alerts. This is technically possible to do (I have a working prototype), but what it is likely to do is open up an audio connection between the user’s phone and the carer. This is fine in an emergency, but in a false alarm situation, there are privacy issues because the user may be doing something to cause the alarm that he/she would rather the carer did not hear, so I am a bit wary of publishing it…..

I think (please correct me if I am wrong) that the main reason for wanting phone alerts is a better notification – you get repeated ringing for a call, but only a single notification sound for an SMS, which is easier to miss. And I have a solution for this which avoids the privacy worries.

• The carer runs an app which monitors incoming SMS text messages to detect a special code which says the message is from OpenSeizureDetector.
• If the code is not found in the message, it is ignored.
• If the code is present, the app starts to make a repeated beep sound indefinitely, and displays a screen with an ‘Accept Alarm’ button on it.
• The beeping stops when the carer presses the ‘Accept’ button.

I think that this solution gives the improved carer notification using SMS, without the need to open a call – they can dial the user’s number if they want to check if it is a genuine seizure or a false alarm.

The new app that the carer needs on his/her phone is called the “SMS Annunciator” (if you have a better name suggestion, please let me know!). The version for testing is available from the source code repository here.

There is also a new version of the main OpenSeizureDetector App (V3.5.0a) which includes the inclusion of the required code in the text message so that the SMS Annunciator will respond to it. The test version of the main app is here.

Screenshots

Instructions for Testing

• Upgrade the user’s phone to use the test version of the OpenSeizureDetector app.
• Check that it still works as normal – if there are any issues, just uninstall it and re-install the version from Google Play Store. (There are quite a few changes behind the scenes because I have also introduced support for a BLE (bluetooth) data source that I am testing with a BangleJS watch, so I may have broken something…).
• Enable SMS alerts and check that these are also sent as they were before (but note that there is a 6 character code on the end of the message that was not present previously).
• Have a carer install the SMS Annunciator on their phone.
• Opening the SMS Annunciator app should briefly show a fairly blank screen, with a prompt to accept permission to read SMS messages. The blank-ish screen disappears when the permissions have been accepted, then a Green OpenSeizureDetector icon should appear in the status bar.
• Initiate an SMS alert by either shaking the arm wearing the watch, or using the ‘Test SMS Alert” menu item on the user’s phone.
• When the SMS arrives on the carer’s phone, it should make a loud ‘beep-beep-beep’ noise repeatedly, and a screen should appear that has a big red ‘Accept Alarm’ button.
• Pressing the ‘Accept Alarm’ button should stop the beeping (until the second OpenSeizureDetector SMS arrives and sets it off again).
• The ‘Stop’ button on the screen allows the SMS Annunciator to be shut down so it will not alarm when SMS messages arrive.

Please report any issues to graham@openseizuredetector.org.uk or the Facebook page.

I have been discussing the way OpenSeizureDetector raises alarms when a seizure is detected with a potential new user. He is used to the SeizAlarm system that runs on apple devices and raises the alarm by initiating a phone call (as opposed to wifi or SMS text message in OpenSeizureDetector.

I can see that initiating a phone call would be useful, because you get multiple rings rather than just a little beep for a text message arriving, so I am thinking about implementing it. There are a few potential issues though:

• Privacy – the simplest way of doing it will be to just have the users phone telephone the carer. This will leave an audio connection open when the carer answers. That is fine in a genuine emergency, but if the user does not notice that the alarm has been initiated there could be privacy concerns with the carer hearing things he/she is not supposed to hear.
• The solution to the point above would be to play a pre-recorded message rather than open an audio connection, but I don’t know how to do that at the moment.
• Google – given the difficulty I had in persuading Google to keep OpenSeizureDetector on the Play Store with the ‘Dangerous’ permissions to send SMS messages, I don’t fancy adding making a phone call without user intervention part of the main app – what I would propose to do is make a separate app that would be installed manually from the source code repository, and the main app would just ask it to make the call – so the main app does not need any extra permissions.

I would welcome users thoughts – would you like phone call alerts (I have to ask because it is not something that is useful for the way we use OpenSeizureDetector, so how far up the priority list it goes depends on how many users would like the feature).

Comments to graham@openseizuredetector.org.uk or the OpenSeizureDetector facebook page please.

Thanks!

Graham.

At work today I gave a talk on OpenSeizureDetector at our department’s seminar. It covers the motivation behind the project, the various seizure detection methods that have been tried, and an overview of the challenges of going from a technical solution to a deployable system for end users.

The slides are here if anyone would like to read them: https://github.com/OpenSeizureDetector/Presentations/raw/master/01_CfAI_Seminar_Aug2020_Issue_1.pptx

Or a PDF version which is much smaller but does not contain the embedded videos: https://github.com/OpenSeizureDetector/Presentations/blob/master/01_CfAI_Seminar_Aug2020_Issue_1.pdf

Graham (graham@openseizuredetector.org.uk)

I have just published Version 3.2.1 of OpenSeizureDetector on Google Play Store.

The main change is the addition of a Spanish translation (thank you, Cesareo Mario Guajardo Murillo!). It also contains some minor improvements to the main display text layout.

It should become available for installation via Google Play in the next few hours. If you have any issues with this release, you can install the previous version by downloading the .apk installation file from the Github repository.

As usual, please let me know if you have any issues with this release.

Thanks, Graham (graham@openseizuredetector.org.uk)