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My partner is disabled, and my home office is far enough from the bedroom/her work desk that I sometimes can't hear her when she could use, wants, or needs help

My partner is disabled, and my home office is far enough from the bedroom/her work desk that I sometimes can't hear her when she could use, wants, or needs help. These very different priorities make messaging me difficult for her sometimes, not to mention that I can't know what the urgency is if she messages me over SMS/Signal/etc. As a result, we were looking into a very similar system where we each have an LED signboard, speaker, and priority lights on the top of a small device that lives on top of our monitors along with an app where she can select "not urgent, but you should know", "when you have a moment", "as soon as you can", and "urgent, right now" in an app, with an optional message, and the device makes a tone and lights the lights associated with the most recent, highest priority message as well as reminding every five minutes. I'm playing with an ESP32 right now to implement, but it's nice to see that the entire concept isn't entirely unprecidented.

sgarland 1y ago
That’s a great idea! I remember on an Android phone - maybe Galaxy Nexus, or the original Pixel - you could blink an LED with different colors for different app notifications. I had blue, yellow, red, and green for various apps, and so without ever having the screen turn on or the device make sounds, I could tell if I should bother to check. To me, not having any sensory disabilities, that’s a lower cognitive load than banners or other text/icon-based notifications.
- LtWorf 1y ago
  I had a samsung with this over 10 years ago.
- DrillShopper 1y ago
  The first Android phone I owned also had this feature, and it was super helpful. It's a shame that our phones are becoming more and more voracious surveillance devices without the common courtesy of doing things that are helpful for the user.
- AceJohnny2 1y ago
  The Nexus One [1] from 2010 had a little trackball that could light up for notifications. While the trackball was understandably nixed in later models (though it was still useful for fine control!), its notification feature is dearly missed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_One
- Pilottwave 1y ago
  It is so useful, for me a must have on every phone. on Android the app aodNotify is what I've been using to recreate it.
latexr 1y ago
If you have Apple devices and share your locations in Find My, she could use the Find My app to make your devices beep loudly and optionally show a message. Great for urgency, since the beep is really loud and doesn’t stop until you tell it to. Your current setup is, of course, much more interesting.
justsomehnguy 1y ago
Or just get a $5 radio doorbell. You know, when it's 'urgent, right now' you don't want to learn what you are too late because for whatever reason internet/wireless/cellular wasn't working.
- haiku2077 1y ago
  Or a lamp, an RGB bulb, and a quick app to make a widget to set the color for the low-urgency requests.
- mystifyingpoi 1y ago
  This ^ anything else is just wanting to play with tech instead of solving the problem immediately. Which is fine, sure, but that radio doorbell (or better, 3 different ones for different priority levels, since it seems important) will fix the issue right now.
  - DrillShopper 1y ago
    This project is also a reason for me to play with LoRA, hence the ESP32, but point taken, certainly. Rather than do that I would probably hard wire it if the Internet and LoRA are not sufficient.
heeton 1y ago
I’ve built a few things like this using Nerves / Elixir on a pi. It’s got a really nice dev experience through to useful deployment and over-the-air updates. I highly recommend it to anyone building little functional prototypes of this sort.

sgarland 1y ago

That’s a great idea! I remember on an Android phone - maybe Galaxy Nexus, or the original Pixel - you could blink an LED with different colors for different app notifications. I had blue, yellow, red, and green for various apps, and so without ever having the screen turn on or the device make sounds, I could tell if I should bother to check. To me, not having any sensory disabilities, that’s a lower cognitive load than banners or other text/icon-based notifications.

LtWorf 1y ago
I had a samsung with this over 10 years ago.
DrillShopper 1y ago
The first Android phone I owned also had this feature, and it was super helpful. It's a shame that our phones are becoming more and more voracious surveillance devices without the common courtesy of doing things that are helpful for the user.
AceJohnny2 1y ago
The Nexus One [1] from 2010 had a little trackball that could light up for notifications. While the trackball was understandably nixed in later models (though it was still useful for fine control!), its notification feature is dearly missed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_One
Pilottwave 1y ago
It is so useful, for me a must have on every phone. on Android the app aodNotify is what I've been using to recreate it.

latexr 1y ago

If you have Apple devices and share your locations in Find My, she could use the Find My app to make your devices beep loudly and optionally show a message. Great for urgency, since the beep is really loud and doesn’t stop until you tell it to. Your current setup is, of course, much more interesting.

justsomehnguy 1y ago

Or just get a $5 radio doorbell. You know, when it's 'urgent, right now' you don't want to learn what you are too late because for whatever reason internet/wireless/cellular wasn't working.

haiku2077 1y ago
Or a lamp, an RGB bulb, and a quick app to make a widget to set the color for the low-urgency requests.
mystifyingpoi 1y ago
This ^ anything else is just wanting to play with tech instead of solving the problem immediately. Which is fine, sure, but that radio doorbell (or better, 3 different ones for different priority levels, since it seems important) will fix the issue right now.
- DrillShopper 1y ago
  This project is also a reason for me to play with LoRA, hence the ESP32, but point taken, certainly. Rather than do that I would probably hard wire it if the Internet and LoRA are not sufficient.

heeton 1y ago

I’ve built a few things like this using Nerves / Elixir on a pi. It’s got a really nice dev experience through to useful deployment and over-the-air updates. I highly recommend it to anyone building little functional prototypes of this sort.