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I'm not elderly, but I live by myself and wonder if there is a way to set up Alexa or the like to send a text message & email to my relatives if I become incapacitated. Obvious signs of Incapacitation would be a 20-hour period of

  1. Not leaving the house, or
  2. Not turning on or off the alexa-controlled smart-lights in my bedroom.

Obviously, my cellphone's location could be used as additional data.

Any thoughts on how to do something like this?

(I had two friends become incapacitated who would have died if not found. One vomited a huge amount of blood and passed out until transfused, and another contracted meningococcal meningitis and passed out as well. In the latter case, someone realized it was odd he didn't come to work and busted the door down.)

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I would disagree with @hardillb, in parts.

With Alexa itself you cannot do anything, but you have other options. A simple solution I could think right now can be deployed like this:

  • Set up a BLE enabled device in your house (Raspi, ESP32) which scans for beacons around.
  • Get yourself a BLE beacon with accelerometer and configure it to advertise data as wanted. Wearable beacons are awesome
  • BLE scanner sets up a connection with Alexa and she does the rest.

You can develop this by using the custom skills API as well as using an Echo device with the gadgets toolkit. Echo also supports ZigBee, I think.

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    None of that actually answers the question of how an Alexa device monitors your movement (or lack of) and even with a custom skill you don't get notified if You've turned a device controlled locally on/off (e.g. Philips Hue) only if you have controlled a device via that skill. And the Alexa device won't notify somebody else, best it can do is trigger a local alert on the connected Alexa device (e.g. in your own home)
    – hardillb
    Aug 8, 2019 at 6:10
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    That's why I said I disagree in parts. Alexa itself is not useful in this situation but you can have her call a phone number via Twilio, for example.
    – Marco Tulio Souza
    Aug 8, 2019 at 18:59
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No, Alexa devices don't surface any information that could be used for that type of monitoring.

The best you can do is use the voice call feature to ask Alexa to call somebody from your contacts if you couldn't reach your phone for some reason.

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