No, she should never be able to turn it on. What I want her to do is to "ask" us, through sign language, hand-guiding, or other means. But she will use it for odd things, not just popcorn, if she can use it in the middle of the night. Cheese, bread, etc. Bread gets pretty bad in just a half-minute, let alone two minutes. She should not ever be able to turn it on.
We should be able to activate it conveniently.
A long time ago, I was talking with a guy who has worked with chimpanzees since the 1960's with the Garnders, teaching them to sign. He hated researchers who used colored plastic chips to teach communication. Why? He said, "What if you don't have the chips around? They get frustrated. It's not good. They should be taught to communicate with what they always have with them, their hands."
It's like that. I don't want to be stuck at some point having to waste time finding the RF gadget. It is really too much to ask to have it hanging around my neck all the time. I work on my acreage a lot, jog, go to stores, etc. I live a life. And if it falls off, gets damaged, etc.. Well, you get the idea.
And heck, she will see what it does (as she does with remote controls, already) and then start begging or grabbing for it. And I'll just have to fight her and that itself will make my life worse for the wear.
No. It needs to be something near the unit that I can easily and always find.
I am gradually getting the picture. I have heard that pet door flaps can be obtained that only open when the pet wearing the correct microchip goes near the door. You work out where you can wear the chip permanently. A finger ring, a bracelet, earring or under your skin like a pet does.
You walk into the kitchen all power points are dead, swipe your wrist past the secret sensor built into the door frame and the power points become active. You could add extra interlock secret switches like pull open a drawer slightly, whistle a quick tone, before the power points become live.
When you are finished in the kitchen, swipe the power points off or let them time out automatically if you forget to swipe them off.
Have you considered one of the speech recognition chips from
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Use one keyed only to you and your wifes voice for the activation stuff, which seems to be the main problem. Of course you still have to deal with switching mains safely, but that is the easy part, its keeping your daughter away from possible harmful/dangerous stuff that seems to be the main issue.
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Regards,
Adrian Jansen adrianjansen at internode dot on dot net
Design Engineer J & K Micro Systems
Microcomputer solutions for industrial control
Note reply address is invalid, convert address above to machine form.
We are facing similar problems with 2 grandmothers, 1 76 and one 89 which both are starting to turn into children again.
As part of addressing these problems, I have added "timers" in the AC line for several things including the microwave oven. I originally went with a keep it simple approach using a homebrew design and PLC chips.
I changed the wall plugs over to non-standard 30 amp style so nothing would plug-in directly and you had to use the timer box as a "cable adapter".
Each timer box was controlled from a common black box using a basic stamp controller. The front panel had buttons labeled microwave, toaster, food processor, etc. as well as a simple 10 key keypad for a security code entry.
I have just completed bench testing my second generation and will update the remote boxes with the following features:
Current sense and threshholding - this allows the microwave to keep track of time and stay live but immediately shuts down all ac if energized for cooking without having "authorization" from the control panel
Local override - turn on without controller by cycling on/off a predetermined pattern or number of times. Example - override for for processor by pushing pulse control in (I am using ON in Morse but pick your own)
Failure indicator led - did someone try to use an appliance without enabling first
Programmable timeout - If I enable the microwave and walk away without using it, it will default back to off condition after 5 minutes (again software time tweakable).
Using the PLC devices and simple switching makes the little black boxes simple and the controller is running BASIC which is real easy to hack and slash for your configuration. By using NEMA approved plugs of a less that standard home format, the appliances can only be plug in via the slave boxes.
A keypad for security sounds reasonable, but maybe the daughter is smart enough to watch and learn the entry code.
The OP has already knocked back a lot of suggestions, for fairly good reasons. Maybe its time to step back and think some more about the underlying goals behind the request.
--
Regards,
Adrian Jansen adrianjansen at internode dot on dot net
Design Engineer J & K Micro Systems
Microcomputer solutions for industrial control
Note reply address is invalid, convert address above to machine form.
You can leave the trigger pulse high for the on interval. The TRIAC only shuts off and stays off when the AC current drops below the threshold *and* the trigger is off.
There are strong boxes with 4 digit keypads and troughs for 4 fingers so you can do it with the box out of sight. I've heard that autistics sometimes have amazing abilities. You'd think they were geniuses or psychic. So I see a potential problem with the squeeze bulb in that Athena (great name for a girl *or* a project!) might detect Jon's arm muscle twitching and infer the squeeze code.
Wait one stinkin' minute, screeech! :) Assuming no one can figger out your code/entry method, what's the difference between a bulb that actuates a switch 10 feet away and a button that activates a switch 10 mm away with wires running 10 ft away to where the bulb activaed switch would have been? That's my "few minutes down the road" thought (see below.)
I see an alarm switch behind the rear edge of a shelf or something. Tap out some morse. KISS.
My best ideas come after I'm a few minutes down the road. Sometimes just not thinking about something allows the right brain to cut through the noise.
First I'd check Graybar or some large electrical supplier for low voltage controlled, isolated relays in a box that can be inserted into the range and outlet wiring. Note that "lighting & recaptacles" for each room ends up on the same breaker and the circuit would need to be split. That sucks.
That'd simplify things - the off-the-shelf relay. Otherwise you just cram it in a metal box and use an opto isolator. We can help with that - proper isolation.
I read in sci.electronics.design that Active8 wrote (in ) about 'Custom AC power switch', on Fri, 11 Feb 2005:
Perhaps not actually psychic, but autism is often associated with exotic abilities such as lightning calculation. We have in UK a seriously autistic guy who has a 2500 year calendar in his head, down to day of the week.
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Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk
I forget if you have decided against biometric devices. Perhaps because of expense. Possibly some of these commercial companies would be interested in sponsoring work for the community that you said shares this type of problem.
This link talks about companies having IC fingerprint sensors in the $50 range though the sensors output would still have to be matched against the allowed users:
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Two of the IC approaches--one from SGS-Thomson, the other from Veridicom, a spin-off of Lucent Technologies' Bell Laboratories (
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dc-capacitive sensors. Harris Semiconductor Corp's FingerLoc is an ac-capacitive sensor. The fourth approach, Thomson-CSF's FingerChip, uses thermal sensing. Like most optical fingerprint sensors, each IC sensor produces a high-resolution (several-hundred-pixels by several-hundred-pixels by 8 or 16 bits) image of a finger tip.
STMicroelectronics has a fingerprint detector module.
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This site has fingerprint detection stand alone modules. As well as parts that you might cobble something together for your self.
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This seems to have quite a lot of the companies with products used today:
No quandry at all. If it needs to be magic, my idea would do. There's no bulb visible anywhere - something I'd be sure to rip out. You bump the shelf into the switch in code or push your foot against the base of the cabinet under the counter a few times (that's an easy drop into the basement for the controller.) No one sees anything.
As a follow-up to my other post on biometric sensors. Have you considered using an old junk PC with Microsoft's fingerprint reader to block access to logging on the computer except to yourself and your wife? With the PC then able to unlock the Power switch through the USB or Parallel Port? That could either be a custom bit of electronics or I've heard of off the shelf electronics that run off the Parallel Port.
The definition of "simpler" depends on all the details. I'm not convinced it would be simpler. But then, I know my situation well.
I've already been down this road with a great many devices relying on handhelds such as remotes. You can take my word for it -- this isn't a good solution for my circumstances. She will perseverate on them. And this *will* be a problem for me.
Sorry it's been some time for a response, but I've been away on a business trip.
Yes. That is pretty good, I think. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but one of the things I considered was using an RFID encapsulated into a plastic credit card, upon which I'd paste a picture for her. She could grab that card and wave it near the microwave and all the necessary particulars would be automatically programmed in. This would be an optimal solution for the microwave, as I'm sure she could handle the popcorn picture just fine. It would allow me to program copies of the same card or also to program other cards for other foods I might want to test her with, each with their own pictures. That microwave idea isn't general enough for other power outlets, most of which I don't want her using at all. But the microwave is something she is *almost* able to handle, if only something like the card existed today.
The idea you mention above might work (room-wide basis.) I could see how if it was too inconvenient. My gut tells me it would be trouble, though. I really need the ability to experiment on a per-item basis with her, so that I can tinker to get the whole picture right. An example would be that I shut off, by default, too many things and that this causes her to stress out and wreck havoc elsewhere in the middle of the night. Not being able to turn on the room lights would be a specific example of this. I'd be able to anticipate some of this, but really it would need to be convenient to change whatever the current arrangement was.
One of the problems in providing a commercial product into markets like this, it seems to me, is that the problems are semi-custom. Each person's needs have their unique aspects, which arranges the priorities in different order. I suspect that the various needs probably break down into a few definable categories, but I don't really know. I do know my daughter, though.
Okay. I'm also thinking of a homebrew design, now.
Ah. Now, that's an idea I can and should consider for some of the problems I'm facing. Not all, but some.
One of the problems I'm facing that this does NOT solve for me, is that Athena will observe the use of these devices. She will NOT be able to learn the secret codes, I'm sure. So that's to the good. But she will KNOW that she doesn't and cannot figure it out. And this will very much frustrate and anger her. The result of that will probably be having these devices thrown around the room, thrown outside the door into the yard, pestering us to help her and punch in the code and plug it in, etc.
To make this point even clearer, in case others don't know, there was a time many many years ago that others tried to tell us that we needed to get Athena sleeping on a so-called "normal sleeping cycle." (They were just trying to be helpful, because my wife and I were having a hard time dealing with our own schedules in combination with Athena's bizarre system of sleep.) They said we should lock her in her room until she settled down and went to sleep. Well, the result was that she would rant and scream and cry and yell -- not just for two or three hours at a time, but instead of 12-14 hours solid. She'd slam herself in the door. In one case then, she literally sheered the nails into the studs and knocked the entire frame out. (Not the first time, nor the last. We've just started to replace the old door frames with the wrap-around-the-wall types that are much stronger.) Even after nearly a year trying, no change except that she was beating us down very well. Letting her find her own cycle has made our life much easier in the long run and ... well, she still has a bizarre cycle at
20 years old. No change in that. Sometimes 14 or 16 hours is a day to her, sometimes 36 hours is. Oh, well.
The point here is that she will focus on these and make our lives a real pain over them. Whatever method we devise for a solution here needs to be one where the technique for enabling the various systems can be hidden in such a way that she will think it is entirely "MAGIC" that we use. No technical gizmo can become the focus. For example, if we have a toaster oven that we just seem to turn on and use normally without any obvious special means that she can observe, she will struggle with it on her own for a bit and eventually decide to simply hand us the food when she wants it cooked that way. And that's fine, the way we want it. But if she sees us use some "special device" or "special means" and she makes the connection that this is either now missing (hidden) or else needs a special technique to make it work, she may get frustrated and angry. But not so, when all the pieces she sees are always there.
One of her special talents as an autistic is the ability to walk into a room, any room, and immediately spot each and every tiny difference in the room. If I've brought something in and hidden it in a cupboard, she will notice the slight shift in the cupboard door and immediately head over there and open it to see what happened inside. She spots things where I've intentionally tried to put everything back exactly. And she does so with uncanny skill.
What I need is something that looks innocuous (she will see it, of course, when I install it and probably play with it a little) but for which she cannot readily associate it with the device being activated. I can go over to the sink, gently squeeze a bulb, and then walk over to the microwave about 30 seconds later and use it and she won't make the connection if I do it right. But if I use something that is physically near the device and seems in any way obvious to its operation, then all bets are off and she will dedicate herself to discovering how to make it work or make my life miserable or both.
She really has no other purpose in life than to discover the world around her in her own interesting ways. For some of these, I love being around her. She has a wonderful sense of humor that is uniquely quirky and pays me back a lot for other times. She's very happy, most of the time, laughing and giggling and running to and fro about the house. But when faced with something she decides to pursue, she will dedicate 100% of her thought and time to the project -- for days and days at a time.
So you learn a kind of "autistic karate" that uses her interests and gets her to put her time into that and to avoid presenting her with clear barriers that she will decide she has to crash. One needs to find subtle ways so that she doesn't make something the focus of her attention.
Not terribly important in my case (time on the clock doesn't need to be right.) But I like the idea, generally.
Not a priority for me, but see what you mean.
Yes. This is something I'd like, of course. My own desire is to have this programmable without having to remove or alter anything, physically. The circuit remains where it is (hidden, or mounted in a difficult place, etc.) and should be changeable by an appropriate alteration of the usual enabling operation (in my case, I might simply hold the switch for two LONG held times which will enter a programming mode where the SHORT pulses are read as minutes until a LONG pause happens, when the programming is considered finished.
I don't want to have to unearth the unit to reprogram the time.
I'd rather not tether myself to some computer as the means of turning things on and off. If the computer is shut down, I have to start it, for one thing. It's just not very convenient, is another. (This is a place with over 5000 sq ft to it and it's quite a walk, at times.)
Regarding using finger-print methods, that might work out. But I suspect not, unless they can take a LOT of abuse and are soap-and-water washable. She will likely smear chocolate on them, bang on them some (because she's seen me use them, for example, and has decided they should work for her, too.)
I'm sure if you google microwave repair, you'll see how doable it is. When I read up on it umpteen years ago, it discussed all the lockouts and the magnetron electronics. It's something simple like a relay and/or MOSFET, HV cap, & HV diode. You'd just be turning the magnetron on and off.
Well, that's true enough, now that I think more closely about what you were saying. Thanks for bringing me back to that.
I guess my point here would be that all I really need is something as simple and cheap and easily threaded around as the aquarium tubing. Actually, I also like the idea of wiring, as well, mostly because I'm comfortable with it from experience. But to place the wiring so that I won't worry about it much afterwards, it will probably be no thinner than the tubing and a lot more expensive per foot.
Mostly, though, the point here is that I don't really need anything as operationally complex or feature rich as a keypad. That's wonderful for me, because I enjoy gadgets. But in this case, I don't need all the signal lines. Just one is enough:
DEFAULT STATE 0: SHORT pulse --> State 1 0: LONG pulse --> State 4 0: otherwise --> State 0 State 1: SHORT pulse --> State 1 LONG pulse --> Yet to be determined LONG delay --> TURN ON, START TIMER, CURRENT MON., State 2 Otherwise --> State 1 State 2: Timer expires & current is low --> TURN OFF, State 0 SHORT pulse --> State 3 LONG pulse --> yet to be determined otherwise --> State 2 State 3: LONG delay --> TURN OFF, State 0 Timer expires & current is low --> TURN OFF, State 0 otherwise --> State 3 State 4: SHORT delay --> State 5 otherwise --> State 4 State 5: accept short pulses to count programmed timer minutes LONG delay --> remember minutes, State 0
Something along these lines are enough. I can program the "short pulse" time to be long enough that she won't trip it. I might flip the meanings so that it is a long pulse that starts the AC and a short, long, short that leads to the programming of time, for another example.
But I could consider any idea and yours isn't bad. It just may be erring a little towards 'overkill'.
Yeah, I really like that one. I tried to convince Amana/Maytag to take this on and actually talked with one of the VPs there. No sell, though. They didn't want to be bothered.
However, I suspect that the magnetron and waveguide section is bought from suppliers with standard interfaces so that the control electronics can be separately designed and fitted. This would allow microwave manufacturers to use standardized magnetron units and would allow them to 2nd source them, as needed. Otherwise, the whole thing is designed as an integrated whole and somehow I think that isn't true. I don't know, though.
But if so, it's quite possible that I could set about to design the front panel and digital portion, relying upon other products for the RFID interface, and design it to attach to the magnetron standard interface (if it exists, and I can find a spec for such a thing.) I could then go through the iterations from experience to work out the details so that it is convenient and easy to use and does the job well. Would make for an interesting project and worthwhile one.
Does anyone know about microwave units on this point? Do manufacturers design things so that there is NO standard interface between the magnetron section and the digital front panel? Or is there a standard in the industry regarding the magnetron section?
If you want to talk about overkill how about the RFID chip that's implanted into a person's arm? Either her that would turn off the appliances if she got close or you two to turn them on. Probably you guys since you mentioned she has the hyper-aware senses and would spot the device after it's placed in her arm.
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