About our project
Cook Safe wants to protect you and your loved ones from unintended kitchen fires.
The Need for Cook Safe
It happens to all of us. We get distracted when cooking and occasionally forget to turn off the stove. Unfortunately, this happens more frequently to our more seasoned relatives and neighbors.
Errors like this can be particularly distressing to the elderly. Leaving the stove or gas on greatly increases the risk of accidental fires – a fact that makes many elderly individuals anxious.
Cook Safe reassures the elderly, and their loved ones, that living at home alone, independently, is still feasible and safe.
How Cook-Safe Works:
Cook-Safe is a module within “Stay in Touch" – a comprehensive system that helps seniors live independently within their homes. It includes medication reminders, an electronic photo album, and management of the tablet from the web portal.
The Cook-Safe device monitors stove burners using an infrared sensor. If heat is detected after the preset time limit ends, the system will issue escalating warnings that the stove may have unwittingly been left on.
The system alerts the owner of the household, and then his/her caregivers, family and friends that are linked to the system (if unintentional use of burners is detected). And, when idle, the tablet displays family photos as way to enhance patient engagement.
The Cook-Safe Technology
There are two parts to the Cook-Safe device:
1) The Cook-Safe device contains a very small computer with Bluetooth capability to communicate with the Android tablet and an infrared sensor to mount over the stove that measures heat radiation.
2) The Cook-Safe software is included in the Stay-in-Touch package, which runs on the Android tablet. It connects to the Internet and is always on.
Caregivers can configure the tablet during installation by adding telephone numbers for notification and determining the time limit for the stove before warnings begin. This configuration can be done on a computer over the Internet.
The estimated cost of producing the device is $50, including a remotely managed system of warnings for the stove.
We how have a Raspberry Pi in our workshop which costs less than $40 and have got it working taking photos and sending them to “the Cloud”. This seems a likely solution path, to put in an IR filter an a web camera and analyze the picture for brightness (rings are ON).
How We Help Families and Caregivers:
Private caregivers and nursing homes are expensive and may be unaffordable and inaccessible for many families. MetLife’s annual survey in 2010 revealed that the average annual cost of a nursing home was almost $75,000 for a semi-private room.
Cook Safe aims to help families by minimizing the financial burden of their loved ones’ healthcare while also giving seniors a sense of security that allows them to live independently with confidence.
Many elderly people feel that the quality of life is higher in their own or their family’s homes. By reducing the number of people entering nursing homes or living communities for the elderly, we are helping to reduce the burden on the caregiving system that is coming with the Silver Tsunami, or increase of baby boomers reaching retirement.
How We Help Fire Departments:
Cook-Safe is a practical, simple and convenient tool that aims to reduce the incidence of accidental fires, protecting the elderly and their neighbors. We hope that we can help localities save much needed resources.
How We Will Spend Your Contributions:
Because the device must be easily installable for family members, we are aiming to build several prototypes with our existing products.
Contributions would support the construction and assessment of functioning prototypes. The initial prototype will likely use the Google Nexus 7. There are several alternative products on the market with the necessary Bluetooth functionality and ability to link to an infrared detector.
In addition to creating prototypes, we have to conduct market tests and figure out the best practices for our device. For example, we need to create a range of alerts that are nuanced in order to differentiate between intentional long cooking and the stove being left on by mistake.
Assessing the appropriate technology, assembling working prototypes and integrating the device with Stay-in-Touch will take about two months.
We are open to suggestions about the technology involved and potential alerts and invite you, our viewers and donors, to give us suggestions and feedback!
Who We Are:
Founders: John Brohan & Donna Byrne
John has extensive skills in computer programming. He has worked with Androids since they became available, and founded an Android Programmers User Group in Montreal. For the last few years, he has worked mostly on developing health and aging-oriented programs.
Donna has nursing skills and a set of home-care clients who are ideal customers for this kind of project. She has run Health Access Home Care successfully for the last 10 years.
Find Us and Talk to Us:
Our Website: http://www.stay-in-touch.ca
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CookSafeProject
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CookSafeProject
LinkedIn: ca.linkedin.com/pub/john-brohan/5/b0a/96a
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Have a question?
If the info above does not help, you can ask the project creator directly.
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