Show HN: Giving my mother-in-law an easy internet radio with real icon buttons

Post by walrus01 » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 2:27 AM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #90

don-code wrote: post #74

This is amazing - and incidentally has given me a solution to a very real problem. My grandmother is suffering from dementia, and within the last few months has forgotten how to tune a radio. She's an avid radio listener, so I worked around this by buying her a few radios, tuning them, and labelling them - so she only has to hit the power button on the one she wants. Unfortunately, she's not thrilled by how much spac…

I think there's a business opportunity around people who aren't tech literate and want what tech they have to stay the same, but every time I think about what an ecosystem that could handle everything from photo sharing to email to even the TV, it seems like a fool's errand because the market seems small, it keeps shifting to people to are comfortable with somewhat newer things, and I don't think enough people would…

Post by voltagex_ » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 3:03 AM UTC

itsyaboi wrote: post #89

don-code wrote: post #74

This is amazing - and incidentally has given me a solution to a very real problem. My grandmother is suffering from dementia, and within the last few months has forgotten how to tune a radio. She's an avid radio listener, so I worked around this by buying her a few radios, tuning them, and labelling them - so she only has to hit the power button on the one she wants. Unfortunately, she's not thrilled by how much spac…

A SDR + some sort of "stream deck" from the parent article could be a potential "offline" solution. You could even wire a couple mechanical keyboard switches to Rpi's GPIO pins for selecting preset channels and avoid the stream-thingy all together. RTL-SDR: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0129EBDS2 https://github.com/pothosware/SoapySDR/wiki/PythonSupport

Post by noisy_boy » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 3:23 AM UTC

randoramax wrote: post #104

ilamont wrote: post #72

I am the family tech support person and I have learned that the things that work best are wired, tactile, and easy interfaces. After COVID hit I set up my father's home office, but recently replaced his bluetooth keyboard with a wired one which eliminates downtime and frustration. My mom likes her iPhone 5S with a real button, and I've enabled accessibility options on her large monitor to show a gigantic mouse pointe…

> at least can answer FaceTime calls because the answering interface is so easy to use. This! I can't believe how shitty every single other video call apps are! Who invented swipe-to-answe? How did they test that? It's the most anti-intuitive move I've ever experienced and it took me months of frustrations to teach my 80+ old parent when he has an Android tablet... I ended up giving him an iPad just to use FaceTime

Post by irrational » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 4:31 AM UTC

irrational wrote: post #100

dehrmann wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a business opportunity around people who aren't tech literate and want what tech they have to stay the same, but every time I think about what an ecosystem that could handle everything from photo sharing to email to even the TV, it seems like a fool's errand because the market seems small, it keeps shifting to people to are comfortable with somewhat newer things, and I don't think enough people would…

I wonder if all the boomers would pay for this. Supposedly they are the ones with lots of money. The market might only be good for 20 years, but you could make a lot of money in those 20 years.

Post by AgoRapide » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 5:26 AM UTC

Too wrote: post #108

noisy_boy wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am probably at the opposite end of comfort with technology and still get confused on whether swiping up or swiping down will accept the call - one of the dumbest interfaces. Why, two buttons to accept and reject calls that we used to have everywhere was too complicated?!

Omg 100x yes, the answering UI on modern phones is the pinnacle example of why flat-ui needs to die. It should be the easiest UI to create with only two freaking buttons but still everyone fails so miserably bad. Shape of buttons are identical, colors are very faded and the icons to indicate phone up or down have been flattened so much you can hardly even recognize any of them is a phone. Or even worse are those you…