[haertig]

I appreciate all the suggestions and sharing of personal experience!

Originally Posted by stumped

i have to question whether someone with dementia could read and understand reminders on a screen. Thinking back to my mum - she could not have coped with that.

There are all different levels of dementia. You don't go from normal to catatonic overnight. Usually the progression takes years, but the rapidity depends on what age you were diagnosed at. Someone diagnosed at age 70 may live for 20 years. Someone diagnosed at 90 may live for two. There are other factors besides age that determine how quickly someone will go downhill. And it also varies from person to person what will be affected. Some will not be able to bathe or take care of personal hygiene. Others will be able to take care of that just fine, right up to the end, but won't be able to do a simple math problem.

We tried the low tech route of- a big whiteboard and dry-write pens in her kitchen which family could write reminders on when visiting, but it was not very successful - and that was with a classroom sized whiteboard!

Too many events would certainly get confusing. What I am trying, and we'll see if it works, is a display that only shows events for the current day. Which is typically one or two events, maybe three on an extremely busy day.

From what I read, the reason analogue clock displays work is because that is what those people grew up with.

Being able to read an analog clock is typically one of the early things to go. As a matter of fact, there is a standard "Mini Mental Status Exam" that is used everywhere and one of the questions relates to analog clock use. The question is some variation of, "Draw me a circle. Now draw in the hour and minute hands so that it reads ten minutes past eleven". The ability to do that typically goes very early in dementia. They can read an existing analog clock for a while longer though. The ability to use a digital clock usually lasts longer than analog. But each person is different.

The problem I am trying to deal with right now is very specific. For the stage of dementia we're at, looking at a normal calendar that shows activities for a week or a month, combined with not knowing what day it is, leads to pretty bad confusion. Time is not an issue, it is day/date that is being forgotten. My attempts to help are to (1) Make it very easy and clear to see what day/date it is, and (2) cut back the length of the visible calendar to only one or two days (that automatically update) so that the person with dementia does not have to sort through a ton of entries to find the ones for the current day. Currently, abbreviations are still OK, but I suspect that soon that will get confusing. So I'm coding in display formats like "Friday, August 23" and not "Fri, Aug 23".

BTW, there have been three Echo Dots with Alexa in use for two years now. It's easy to ask for the day and date ... once they remember to actually do that. They can also ask, "Alexa, what's on my calendar" or "Alexa, what's my next event." But after I set all that up two years ago, they have not done it, even once. But there have been lots of "Alexa, what is the weather?" and "Alexa, set an alarm for 8am". It's funny how some commands are remembered and used easily, and others seem impossible to remember. Just one of those dementia things I guess. Using the Dots to control her Fire TV (I set that up too!) saying something like "Alexa, Play Cheers" is spotty. Sometimes that is remembered, sometimes not. The biggest issue there was switching the TV input. There are like 3 HDMI inputs, some Component inputs, AUX inputs, antenna inputs ... that is almost impossible for a normal person to figure out, much less one with dementia. The last thing anyone supporting an elderly person wants to hear is "The TV is saying 'no signal' again!" I ended up buying a simple hardware A/B HDMI switch. A single pushbutton - push once to go from A to B, push again to go from B to A. So she uses that to switch from cable input to FireTV input. That works. Mostly.

Being able to try different things to see what works, or alter things as the dementia worsens, is why I am leaning towards the more complex calendar design with a monitor and Raspberry Pi to drive it. Now I just have to work on keeping myself from getting dementia so that I can continue to be able to write programs like this!

p.s. - The level of dementia I am trying to help with right now would be termed "moderate". The person is still in "independent living", but in a senior facility that provides meals, activities, maid service, 24 hour concierge, etc. Eventually "assisted living" may become necessary, and after that, possibly "memory care" (which is similar to the older term "nursing home", but targeted specifically at dementia, not just physical frailness - which usually goes along with it at the end).