My mom lives with my brother. He works from home but he’s away part of every day. What if mom is on the floor?
We have cameras to keep an eye on our mom, but we only look at them now & then.
I’ve been working with AI tools for the last two years. Early this year the tools got good enough to turn an idea into early stage software.
I wondered: Can cameras + AI watch mom for us?
“We” (me + AI) researched several technology choices and then did a lot of work once a good path was chosen.
The answer to that early question is: Yes
So in July I formed Texas Software Factory, LLC, as the legal owner and operator of IsMomOnTheFloor.com
It’s a software service running on Amazon servers that interacts with your existing Ring cameras to provide new functionality (in this case, spotting a person on the floor and letting someone know).
I have to give a shout-out to Ring for making this possible. Earlier this year, they introduced the Ring Appstore and the foundation for my software to connect to your Ring cameras.
The software has been running since June, monitoring 7 cameras in my house, my mom’s house, and my step-mom’s house. It grabs an image from each camera multiple times per hour, and it grabs additional images when the camera senses motion. AI looks at the images and tries to determine if a person is on the floor. If so, an email is sent (text messaging is also planned).
Because my mom will never be on the floor voluntarily in any way, the system is designed to recognize “on the floor” as:
- Lying on the floor
- Sitting on the floor
- Sitting on the floor, propped against a wall
- On hands & knees
- Clumped or wedged where the floor meets the wall/cabinets
- etc.
The system is not perfect and it never will be, but it catches most floor poses that I’ve done in testing, and in all sorts of lighting.
(Scroll down for pics of early testing.)
A lot of refinement has gone into the system over the past 6 weeks to increase seeing real events, and to decrease false alarms. The AIs are pretty darned good but they need tuning. Another big part of this has been figuring out which AIs see a person on the floor better than others, and at what cost. AI costs vary a lot, and people will only pay so much for this service.
A funny false alarm: sometimes the AIs think my German Shepherd is a person lying under a coffee table. Lighting, angle, and partial obstruction all factor in. That false alarm has mostly been fixed. I also think most older people don’t have large dogs in the home.
I’ll be submitting IsMomOnTheFloor to Ring soon.
They have a review process that I assume will include some back-and-forth. I also think they have a process where the app can be approved for limited release. I want to start slowly… have it used in 10 homes, then 20 homes, then 50 homes… as I’m sure there will be lessons learned early that will help later users.
