To be able to call for assistance when laying in bed, Radi needs an accessible and simple system that he can operate.

About Radi (Radovan)

Radi was born in Croatia but has lived in Switzerland since childhood. For many years the Lindli-huus in Schaffhausen is his home. There he lives and works in the studio at Rheinquai and every Monday afternoon as a super equipped janitor - in his bags and backpack you can always find everything you need. In his free time, the 49-year-old Radi likes to watch TV.

Challenge

To move around Lindli-huus and control his environment, Radi has several systems. Attached to his electric wheelchair is an external control system and his telephone. He controls these independently by pressing buttons and can thus start calls. However, when he is in bed, these devices are no longer accessible to him. Radi needs a simple device that he can control himself to make calls in bed. It must be easy to control and robustly attached.

Solution

Radi wanted a solution to make calls from his bed to different people at Lindli-Huus and already had a cell phone with big buttons available for this purpose. However, the buttons on the phone were to small for him to interact with the phone. We built an attachment system to fix the phone on his bed and interfaced the cell phone so that he can control it with one single, large diameter button. A first button press activates the phone. Audio feedback helps him to select to number he wants to call and a second button press confirms the dialing of the number.

In more detail, the solution used an Arduino to process the button presses, play sounds, and trigger the phone buttons via relais that were wired to the phone. The cover of the phone was lifted off to solder wires to the button contacts and nicely closed again afterward, since visual appearance of the phone was crucial for Radi. We built a wooden frame containing all the components which can be fixed between matress and bed frame, where it easy to reach for Radi. An additional bluetooth speaker connected to the cell phones makes it easier for Radi to make the calls while lying in the bed on his back. The calling device was successfully installed at Lindli-Huus for Radi to use after the hackathon. Despite being sceptical initially, Radi was super happy with the final solution.