A Kindle Fire HD with Telegram would be really good and easy to use.
Ask HN: Best Video Call Solution for Elderly
11–20 of 66 posts
Re: Ask HN: Best Video Call Solution for Elderly
#12I’m using an echo show for this use case. My granddad has dementia and lives at home on his own. I set up some blink cameras in his house to watch for falls and setup an echo show so family could speak with him during lockdown. The big advantage I found about the echo show is the “drop in” feature which allows starting a video call with no interaction from his side.
Re: Ask HN: Best Video Call Solution for Elderly
#13Tablet with Kid/Kiosk mode to only allow one app? E.g. iPad with Facetime?
Or PineTab with a browser in kiosk mode (Surf?) pointing to a meet.jit.si room :) It's a breeze to set up with NixOS as long as you're not afraid of the command line, and easy to remotely manage with SSH and fully reproducible configuration. Hit me up for a free sample VM :)
This sounds like a great setup. Never heard of PineTab before - is the CPU powerful enough for live video encoding?
Re: Ask HN: Best Video Call Solution for Elderly
#14I’m using an echo show for this use case. My granddad has dementia and lives at home on his own. I set up some blink cameras in his house to watch for falls and setup an echo show so family could speak with him during lockdown. The big advantage I found about the echo show is the “drop in” feature which allows starting a video call with no interaction from his side.
How do you feel about “drop in”? It feels a little invasive. Do you have the option to have the device ring rather than just dropping in, whilst still maintaining the option in an emergency?
Re: Ask HN: Best Video Call Solution for Elderly
#15My grandmother has an Ipad and an IPhone. We sometimes video call her on here phone using whatsapp. But this works around 50% of the time correctly and the other times we just call using a regular land line phone. She uses the Ipad only as a image viewer. We showed her multiple times how to google something but that is just to difficult for her. But she understands how to watch the photo's we put on the device, and s…
She’s unfortunately not a smartphone or tablet user at the moment, and I doubt that she has any desire (or ability) to learn how to use one... Basically I want a landline phone that can also do video
The feature on my iPad that utterly entranced my mother in law (in her 80s) was Google Street View - she was absolutely fascinated by being able to "visit" places she had been before.
Re: Ask HN: Best Video Call Solution for Elderly
#16iPad and FaceTime. Keep it simple.
Bonus - others in the facility will have the same, including staff.
Re: Ask HN: Best Video Call Solution for Elderly
#17My grandmother has an Ipad and an IPhone. We sometimes video call her on here phone using whatsapp. But this works around 50% of the time correctly and the other times we just call using a regular land line phone. She uses the Ipad only as a image viewer. We showed her multiple times how to google something but that is just to difficult for her. But she understands how to watch the photo's we put on the device, and s…
I found it impossible to teach my elderly grandparents to properly use the swipe-based UI of modern iPads. They kept having issues properly timing it and had random things appear on screen. Even with enterprise lockdown it wasn't possible to disable all the features.
Even worse - you can't lock the iPad to only show FaceTime/Duo/whatever. It stops receiving calls if you put it into single app mode with a communication app.
Re: Ask HN: Best Video Call Solution for Elderly
#18Tablet with Kid/Kiosk mode to only allow one app? E.g. iPad with Facetime?
I tried doing that for my family and iOS has this wierd restriction where it drops all incoming calls automatically when you use Kiosk/SingleApp mode. Even if FaceTime is open in foreground.
Re: Ask HN: Best Video Call Solution for Elderly
#19I'm also looking for something like this - I tried using an iPad but the experience on newer iOS is just too confusing and error prone for elder users. It also doesn't really support locking to single task well.
I've been looking at Skype desk phones but those were discontinued as well. Google Home smart devices are nice for video calls, but you can't disable Assistant functionality. Happy to hear any other recommendations.
Re: Ask HN: Best Video Call Solution for Elderly
#20If you prep their phone with Jitsi Meet then it's very simple to use. My elderly mother even managed to follow the Jitsi link I sent her in a text message, to the Play store, install the app and connect.