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The original was posted on /r/homeassistant by /u/ElevationMediaLLC on 2025-07-31 04:02:12+00:00.

Hi r/HomeAssistant !

This video is something that I’ve been working on for over 12 months, shortly after my elderly mother who lives alone lost her balance for a moment one day last summer and took a fall in her home. She wasn’t injured, there was no need to get her to a hospital - but it really got me thinking. I had just returned from an international business trip mere hours before, and so she was able to get a hold of us - but part of me worried about what if I’d been in the air when it happened, or still on my business trip which was +12 time zones ahead? So I started planning what I would do with Home Assistant to help “keep an eye on her” 24x7 as best I could, but without being intrusive about it.

Note – we did also get her a proper “Life Alert” kind of system and she has a pendant … but that’s not guaranteed to catch every scenario one can think of. And yes, we have had the talk about assisted living, but … she doesn’t want to go, and I get it. So I want to empower her to be as safe as possible. And I’ve documented what I’ve done for her in this video (because now I am having to build a second system for my elderly father who lives in a different state, and also is fiercely independent and proud and doesn’t want help).

I’m not a rockstar YouTuber (yet?) so go easy on the production quality :) but if this is helpful for anyone you know I hope you’ll share it. In a nutshell, for HA gurus - I have simple sensors that are basically invisible to Mom’s day-to-day living, and activation of each one kicks off countdown timer(s) with the intention that the timers should never run down to zero. If they run down to zero, I get a critical alert on my phone which will bust through sleep mode, vibrate only, etc.