In the US, visual alarms are pretty much standard under all the life safety codes for commercial buildings including apartments.[1] When they are not provided, both ADA and the Fair Housing Act [1] both dictate that owners provide them to accommodate the disability. If there's a problem, the fire marshal is a good person to call. They've typically pulled enough bodies from tragedies to last a lifetime, and this shapes their attitude toward non-compliance.
[1] Life safety codes as distinct from building codes apply to all buildings not just those newly constructed.
[2] Likewise for ADA and the Fair Housing Act. There are also state equivalents of both of these in many states that may be more restrictive.
I live in Seattle and I've not had a visual alarm in either apartment I've lived in, nor do I recall seeing one in any I've visited, generally pre-90s construction. Not saying you're wrong, but the visual thing is far from universal and relying on owners accommodating disabilities can be a problem - my grandma can tell you about that. Ideally what you say would be all we'd need, but in the meantime I will certainly keep this app in mind!
Edit: I didn't meant to imply that I, myself, am deaf, only that the places I've lived didn't have visual alarms.
you are right that you don't see them on older building but there are a range of other off the shelf products that can integrate with a smoke detector, phone, doorbell to flash lights or lamp. condo/apt complex also only have to install fire alarm audio visual devices in the room under only certain conditions are met. I see no reason that anyone should rely on this app as a life safety device, it could be a last ditch effort when you travel to a friends home or something similar.
No, although my grandma's requests - a rail on some steps for instance, or an automatic door - haven't been attended to with much alacrity. I just meant to show that the hardware is not so all-present as the requirements would suggest. On newer buildings, probably, but most of the apartments around here are fairly old and are probably only updated upon request.
There's a difference. Swapping out a horn for a strobe, or horn strobe device is non-structural. Automatic doors and additional hand rails are structural modifications. Within the unit they are probably not required. Contacting the Federal Fair Housing staff might be a next step.
Not sleeping with one's iPhone is far more common, despite the belovedness of Apple products.
In design terms an alarm strobe has removed everything unnecessary for its purpose and its sole purpose is to save your life on the rare occurrence of fire. It won't be on a charger or in your pants or sitting on the table by the TV or off with your spouse on a business trip.
It will be hanging on the wall, with power or backup power, hardwired to the alarm panel because that's what field experience has shown works.
Don't get me wrong, the sentiment behind the product is admirable. But the alarm industry is already deadly serious and has robust proven solutions based not on theory but on close attention to the causes and consequences of actual fires.
yes the flash on and off, for fire alarm notification device, they are powered by a direct current circuit that also requires battery backup having a constant state light would put a larger load for no gain. Also it be more like emergency lighting not a notification appliance
I'm curious - can't doctors tell if people are asleep/unconscious by shining light into the eye to look for dilation? Why wouldn't that also wake them?
And on another note, it seems like emergency alarm systems should alert people in a number of different ways. Apparently it's not unusual for kids to sleep through regular household smoke detector alarms.
The pupillary reflex is a brainstem reflex. As long as there is brainstem activity, you'd expect that reflex to be present (exceptions: brainstem death, cranial nerve damage, depressants/anesthetics, probably a few others).
You can't tell if someone is awake based on pupillary light reflex.
Hey everyone, I really appreciate all of the positive feedback. This is quite thrilling as a college student. It's the first thing I've made that people actually understand and consider useful.
If any of you download Deafalarm, please let me know how it works for you and what you would like to see improved.
I could also use pointers on getting the word out to people in this niche market.
As someone who's deaf (not Deaf) thank you for making it. Sadly, the vibration the iPhone makes isn't strong enough for me but this is an awesome idea and I hope you succeed with it!
You're welcome, and thank you for the comment. I noticed this as well; I'm definitely searching a way to make the vibration more noticeable. Someone else suggested abandoning the mobile phone platform altogether to make a more robust product in general. If not me, maybe Nest will do something like this with their smoke detectors. They're already connected to wifi, so it would just take a wifi-enabled vibrator do the same thing, perhaps more reliably. Still, it might be a while before every smoke detector is as smart as a Nest ;)
Maybe an iPhone case developed to magnify the vibration sensation?
That would be useful to the use of the phone in general, not just to wake up. Actually, it would be useful for me - and I am not deaf. I keep my phone on vibrate all the time and when on the streets I can only feel the vibration about 20% of the times someone calls me. And I usually i HEAR the vibration, not actually feel it.
Becoming a hardware company is a little to far from you? :)
What about a specialized device that operates off of low energy bluetooth for communicating to the iphone? Something like this could be built with Arduino or Raspberry Pi.
John Muir, the American environmentalist of the 1800-1900's, built an "alarm clock" in 1862 that would dump the occupant off the bed at the defined time.
I really wish that the Fitbit Flex was more hackable -- if I could get a low-power bluetooth fob that could vibrate and display a few lights embedded in my watchband, that would really be all the smartwatch I need.
there are already products built for the deaf to notify them, they integrate with doorbells, smoke/fire alarms, clock alarms, i think you would have better luck on tailoring it for the deaf person that wants an alarm when they travel to friends homes, etc.
No thank you, its great to see such lateral thinking and particularly around something thats the potential to be quite beneficial to people who have live hard enough as it is.
You put a smile on a jaded mans face with this app, and towards tech news thats a rarity for me these days :)
This post fell in rank because it triggered the flamewar detector. I've just restored it. If you see things suddenly reappear on the front page, it's often because a moderator saw a case like this.
From some previous post (don't ask me to find it), it takes into consideration the number of comments vs votes. Many more comments than votes imply a flamewar.
You're welcome. Unfortunately, our algorithm sometimes mis-asseses an enthusiastic discussion as an angry one. The solution is for a human to review the list. I wrote software just for that, but we can't watch it at all times. And the flamewar detector has proven so valuable to HN that turning it off would do more harm than good, so we won't.
Thank you! I'm a college student with an early class (so I have to go to bed earlier than most people), and my dorm can be pretty loud, so I often sleep with earplugs. I didn't like the idea of possibly not waking up in a fire, so I made this to cure my paranoia :p
I don't know how many people will find it useful, but it seemed like something that should exist.
I think that the best ideas come from that things that the creators personally want/need. You found a problem relevant to you, and solved it in a simple, elegant way. It's going to help you, and might even make you a couple bucks on the side. Sounds like a win all around to me.
Great idea for an app! I sleep with earplugs occasionally and I can see myself using your app in that situation. That said, I've been wondering lately if using earplugs often is a healthy thing to do in the long run. I couldn't find any pertinent research about non-professional users.
I wonder the same thing. I find that I dream more when I can hear rain on the roof, so maybe ambient sounds (or a lack thereof) have a real effect on sleep
Humans aren't good judges of how often they dream. You have REM sleep several times a night and generally if you're woken up during REM sleep you will say that you were dreaming.
It is probably more likely that you are simply remembering dreams more when you can hear rain on the roof - either by power of suggestion, or because the stimulus of the rain noise is noticeable and memorable in your dreams, or because the rain itself is waking you up.
This isn't to say that you're wrong - there most certainly is an effect - but whether that effect is positive or negative is unclear.
I too sleep with earplugs in I've noticed something similar. When I take naps during the day and I use the plugs I find that it is the best sleep I get, I feel super refreshed. During the night when I sleep with earplugs in I usually don't sleep as well as I would without them (minus the loud roommates). But I am a side sleeper with a memory foam pillow so it tends to cause some pressure on my ears for prolonged sleep periods.
I totally agree. What a simple yet brilliant idea that will really help people. I wish we could see more stuff like this on the front page and less of the usual "we built a SaaS as a Service service to deliver waffles to your business" stuff.
It's a good start, but it may serve best to remind us of the limitations of basic technology. Instead of an X detector, what we have is an X detector detector. From a design perspective this is obviously odd.
On the other hand, in a sense it's a multi-detector, since in theory it should respond to detectors of many sorts. There are some upsides to that.
You can also see this tool as a sense translator. It is translating hearing to touch, and maybe sight in the future (if the camera flash is also used).
This way we can let the detectors do what they do best, and translate the physical phenomenon used by the signal, if we don't have the physiological capacity necessary to detect it.
Awesome app, can see this coming in handy... you need to promote this and also have an android client before a clone comes out. :)
How is the battery consumption if it runs in the background? I'm guessing it isn't really a worry because if you are in bed you might have a charger, but the best use would be a in a pocket where it be awkward to use a charger, unless you place it under your pillow?
Thanks! It uses around a quarter of your battery overnight. Maybe less. The ideal place is somewhere close to you, like under your pillow or in your pocket, but pillows and covers may dampen the noise.
Any suggestions on getting the word out? I'm psyched that it's on the front page of HN, and never would have thought it would be, but it would be great if anyone knows of places to reach more of the target market.
Hi alexvr,
a bit out of topic question: How did you manage to get the background sound analysis approved? I have an app that does also sound analysis in the background for a different purpose and it gets constantly rejected because of that.
I think audio recording is one of the few things you're allowed to do in the background. I didn't do anything special. Did they give you any specific reasons?
This was the message after the appeal:
"We still found the app is inappropriately using background audio because it is recording audio in the background for an indefinite period of time, which is not appropriate."
Maybe marpalmin was recording and storing big audio files, which might be a privacy issue I assume (if the user forgets the app is running in the background and ends up recording sensitive/private info).
On the other hand I assume that you don't need to keep long audio samples to run your alarm-recognition algorithm and just discard the audio almost right away.
That's just a wild guess of course, it would just seem reasonable to me if the Apple reviewers saw it that way.
I'm not storing audio. Just audio analysis, of course I have a small buffer but that's normal for realtime audio anaylsis. I'm using it to detect footsteps.
Well at least is not the idea to use it being plugged. In fact I even added code so that the app leaves background after 1 hr if it did not go to the foreground in between.
I also found other people with the app being rejected for the same reason after asking about it in the apple dev forum.
The fact that it has to analyze audio makes me wonder if anybody is trying to standardize broadcasting of local emergency signals. For example, a standardized way to broadcast a fire alarm over WiFi or Bluetooth. There's more than local humans that could be alerted. Local systems could use it a cue to shutdown and remote service providers could be alerted that they have to do something.
A specific use case I was thinking of is some local hotels that my company does IT for. Hotels have lots of third party systems embedded locally and service providers doing stuff for them. If the fire alarm sounds, I'm sure they would love to know about it so they can react faster, either for assisting with the immediate crisis or facilitating the recovery. As far as I can tell, the fire detection/alarm systems are stovepipes that don't tell any other systems (other than 911) what is going on.
One example of an existing use of this sort of thing, is that fire alarm systems commonly notify the building's lift controller, which sends the lift to the ground floor and opens the doors.
In light of a recent HN discussion on the incomprehensibility of many product pages and "Show" posts[1], I think it's worth noting that this is a very clear page that lets me know exactly what the product is, how much it costs, and how to get it.
I like the idea, and the objective it aims at fulfilling, I am not aware of the US regulations, but I think if you can hack a wristband like wearable gadget to work with it (of-course it needs to have a vibrator in it), then you can overcome the problem of keeping the cell phone close to your body.
As a hearing-impaired user, I'd actually love something like this if I could "train" it to specific sounds, like my doorbell. Since my phone is almost always in my pocket or hand at home, it would be very easy to feel the vibration and I'd know someone rang the doorbell.
I'm not sure either, but I want to say that since the sound will be at a given frequency in a given pattern, you could probably pick it out relatively reliably...
Also, unlike fire alarms, I think I'd be less worried about false positives or the thing not working -- it would be an annoyance, not something that could potentially endanger my life.
Unsupervised learning to extract high level features might work. Then get examples of the kinds of sounds people are training it on and use that to extract even better features.
My girlfriend is partially deaf in one ear, so sometimes she will oversleep if she is lying on her good ear. A while back I built her an Arduino-powered alarm clock that uses a servo to repeatedly poke her with a foam finger (those big hands you wear at football games). It was a shoddy prototype, but the cool part was it synchronized with her iCal calendar.
So, to answer your question, some [partially] deaf people use a makeshift Arduino robot that is duct taped to the wall next to their bed.
Oh my goodness, that's brilliant. My boyfriend is partially deaf and also the heaviest sleeper I've ever met, and oversleeps pretty regularly even with the loudest blaring alarm I've ever heard, a wake-up light, and a vibrating alarm under his pillow. As a relatively light sleeper with normal hearing this combination nearly gives me a heart attack every morning, while he barely rolls over until I hit him enough times to actually wake him up and turn his alarm clock off, but if I'm not there he tends to oversleep a lot.
To answer GP's question, some partially deaf people use grumpy significant others as an alarm clock. But I might have to look into a similar robotic setup.
I use a vibrating alarm clock. It's a regular alarm with a wire going to a bed shaker (a 3/4" high disk with a vibrating mechanism inside - much like the ones in game controllers). The shaker is located between the mattress and box spring under my head.
Sometimes it startles me awake, which is an unpleasant feeling, but it works for me all the time. And, given that we have a foam mattress, the buzzing is absorbed enough for my wife to easily sleep through it.
I recently discovered Bellman & Symfon, a Swedish company that has some very attractive (naturally) products. Their vibratating/flashing alarm clocks integrate with wireless smoke detectors. I can easily get a stand-alone strobed smoke detector in just my bedroom, but that doesn't help if the other end of the apartment is in flames. http://www.bellman.com/en/our-solutions/fire-safety-solution...
(Anecdotally, I don't actually know any deaf people, so I don't know how effective this is as a way to wake people up...but some of my friends who have perfectly good hearing use this feature because they prefer it to having their phone make loud noises for calls and notifications. So it's good for that, too.)
I've seen this feature touted before, but I don't get it. For 99% of my use, my iPhone is either face-up or in my pocket, making this useless since the camera LED is hidden. If it's face-up, I can already see the alert, including the actual content of the notification.
I often have my phone on a nearby surface, table or chair. Even if face down, my case maintains a slight clearance letting enough of the light out to be noticed at a distance.
I believe person who initially showed me this feature kept her phone in a open-top handbag. Again, whatever the phone orientation, the reflected bright notification flickering would often be noticeable.
The notification flashes are somewhat negative distractions in dark places like a car at night, or theater, if the phone has been left on lap or seat. Also, it may sometimes give third parties the mistaken impression you're taking photos when you're not.
Great idea. OP: Why not allow the app to use the camera flash as well? I (am not deaf) would prefer to have it on my desk so it can actually listen rather than under a pillow where I'm more likely to knock it out of reach
Unfortunately we could not make the app really work as the precision of timer on Windows phone is horrible, and on IOS you don't have api to properly control vibration...
I used to keep my cellphone under my pillow when I was on-call, but I don't like the idea of zapping my head with direct radio signals for 8 hours at a time.
Unfortunately if I keep my iPhone to the side of the mattress, the vibrations aren't strong enough.
"...listening out for loud and repetitive noises like fire alarms, and vibrates to wake you up when it hears anything similar"
Would that include dog barking? And do you plan to offer it for iPad/Android at any stage?
Am I the only one who can't view the website? It is briefly visible for a second, then redirects to a "itmss://" URL and says "The address wasn't understood".
I'm confused. iPhones have an alarm clock already, and you can already set it to vibrate. Why do I need this app?
(Serious question. I'm hard of hearing, and I do this with my iPhone already.)
To answer some other questions I see in the thread, they make alarm clocks and doorbells specifically for deaf people. I personally own an alarm clock that has an attachment that you slip under the mattress. The vibrations from the attachment shake the bed, waking me up. I don't use it anymore, since I share the bed with my girlfriend, but it worked wonders for me in college.
Here's a website with some deaf-centric things like alarm clocks and doorbells: http://www.harriscomm.com/
From the description : " It stays up all night, listening out for loud and repetitive noises like fire alarms, and vibrates to wake you up when it hears anything similar."
Because this isn't an alarm clock, it's a vibrating alarm triggered by noise. It's not supposed to replace an alarm clock, but notify the deaf user about other things, like a fire alarm.
I had a similar thought. Less about the regulation, more about liability.
If I'm deaf and I pay for an app to tell me when an alarm is sounding, I have a certain expectation that it has been rigorously tested and will work without fail. And I'm a software engineer who understands the limitations and failure modes of such applications on non-real-time, commodity kit.
Please be extra careful about how you market this. I absolutely applaud your ingenuity, but I'd feel differently if I found out my elderly, hard of hearing gran was relying on any app on her smartphone to wake her if she left the stove on and went to bed.
I expect a proportion of your customers may be less technical users (or well-meaning relatives) with little understanding of the limitations and risks.
However, it is indeed an interesting idea. There may already be something on the market, but what about developing it into a physical device running on dedicated hardware? Crowd-fund an "alerter badge" or pin or whatever, and budget heavily for testing & verification. You could be onto a winner.
EDIT: Please don't be put off altogether by the comments. It's simply that non-real-time, non-failsafe smartphones aren't built for life-critical applications like this. The idea isn't a bad one - you're just targeting the wrong platform.
This. There's a reason there are regulations for this sort of product–people need to be able to rely on life-saving devices completely and with 100% certainty.
At the very least, I'd suggest researching brudgers' post and adding a notice that the ADA requires accommodation visual alarms.
edit: You really can't add enough disclaimers to something like this. The last thing you want to do is leave someone thinking this is going to save their life. Maybe as a tertiary failsafe, but you can't guarantee that's how it's being used.
Thanks for the great comment. It's rigged to err on the false positive side, to be safe. I didn't expect this sort of interest, honestly, so I'll probably need to improve the app and make it as safe as possible if I find that people are actually using it.
Yeah, I sort of worry about legal and moral issues. I'd feel horrible if someone died in a fire or something while relying on my app. I want people view it as more of a backup that will at least improve their chances. It's better to have a chance than nothing, right?
This sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen. I think it's a great idea, but at 2.99 I don't think it's going to be profitable enough to take on the lawsuit risk.
EDIT: Let me preface by saying, the fact that a person could be sued for creating an app that creates a solution where few or none existed is both utterly ridiculous and highly likely. Which is why I think...
...There needs to some kind of legislation/regulation on lawsuits. Perhaps, the plaintiff must pay the legal fees for the defendant upfront, up to a maximum of 5% of the desired damages being sought.
Example: If you want to sue for a $1 million, you have to pay up to $50K in legal fees for the defendant. If you win the case, the defendant's legal fees are tacked onto the damages that he must pay. If you lose the case, you lose all your money.
I think this would discourage many lawsuits from happening. Only those with true merit would be pursued.
Maybe useful for some small-claims suits, but not so great for tort cases that have merit. If a negligent company continues to produce toys that hurt children, should the family have to pay 5% of the potential damages before getting a day in court?
I don't think suits against game manufacturers like this necessitate any kind of legislation. Why? Simple. Like my lawyer told me when I was building my first app- "Sure you COULD get sued, but you don't have two nickels to rub together. No attorney would take a case against you." In business getting sued is a good thing. It means you're successful.
Yeah, I certainly hope that doesn't happen. I just wanted to make something that makes the world ever so slightly better for a few people. It's too bad if those are the consequences of making something with good intentions, ya know?
What exactly would the author be sued about? I can't see anything obviously inviting a user to sue.
EDIT: I think it would be a good idea to remove the language about fire alarms etc. and only mention alarm clocks and the like. It would be much harder to sue if the app didn't claim to respond to fire alarms.
Or instead you could put a warning removing liability and stating that it is not a guaranteed protection and standard emergency protocols should still be performed. This is a helpful tool, not a be all end all guarantee of protection.
What basis do you have for this statement? 'Sounds like' and 'i don't think' are not very convincing.
Any reliance on an app such as this is going to be at the risk of the user. This is a tool for assistance and is not in anyway a replacement for standard emergency protocol.
Meaningful app. You are charging 2.99$ - but I still don't feel bad. It's a useful app and we need more of such apps, even though the price is > 0.99$.
It doesn't look like an alarm to wake you in the morning, but an alarm to listen for fire alarms and other such things and vibrates to wake you in the case of an emergency.
Vibrating for it to wake you means you need to keep it close to your body. I wonder what health implications it may have -- In general its really bad to have a cell phone touching your body for prolonged periods of time because of the radiation it emits.
The problem is that it is VERY hard to do a conclusive study on this. Never mind that a low dose radiation study would take many years: the hard part is that you need to randomly select half of your group to use only non-radiating (non-functional) cell phones. Good luck finding a group of volunteers for that.
Following your link:
> In 2011, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified mobile phone radiation as Group 2B - possibly carcinogenic.
Group 2B includes coffee, pickled vegetables, titanium dioxide (used in food coloring and sunscreens), and work in carpentry, dry cleaning, printing industry, and textile industry.
I think I'll keep my cell phone. (And coffee and kimchi, for that matter.)
Not necessarily disagreeing with you, but doesn't everyone (or at least the solid majority) keep their cells in their pockets? Close to er..."important" parts of your body?
Sleeping 8 or more hours next to it is just going to compound the issue, but this is already something people don't seem to care that much about...at least in practice.
[1] Life safety codes as distinct from building codes apply to all buildings not just those newly constructed.
[2] Likewise for ADA and the Fair Housing Act. There are also state equivalents of both of these in many states that may be more restrictive.