Fall detection is something we all worry about once our family members reach a certain age. How can you tell if someone has fallen and cannot get up? Or someone cannot get out of bed?

Personally for my situation, am not there yet where I have to actively worry about this, but here are a few ideas to consider depending of your situation:

• Professional fall sensing products and services: varies by region but if you’re genuinely concerned you might want to skip the home automation stuff and get something serious and purpose-built with the appropriate notification and alerting service. Here is an article discussing these for the US to help you get started. A friend of mine has signed up for this for her 90+ year old dad in Canada.
• Apple Watch: this device has that built-in, which is neat, but we’re dealing with Alzheimer’s and must not forget to charge this device overnight and while it’s charging it’s not very .. useful? 
• Motion sensors: handy devices, ZigBee and Z-Wave ones have long battery live and they can be hidden as well. Add them as you see fit and build rules in your hub for movement detection or lack of movement for a period of time.
• Cameras: hey if you have them it’s easy to look for yourself! Make sure all major areas are covered with the right angles. Also you can look at “no movement for X hours” rules like motion sensors if your devices support this.
• Weight sensors: personally I have not found any which do not require any “do it yourself” hacking, which is not something our readers must be into if they’re consulting this site. If you know of any please drop me a line!
• Temperature sensing: not sure if I would go down this path, too many opportunities for false positives and similar issues.