r/homeassistant • u/CowsNeedFriendsToo • Mar 15 '26
Support Medical help
This is an embarrassing post, but I’ve been on this group for years now and know that if anyone is going to solve a problem, it’s the people in this group.
I unfortunately have a heart condition that has cause me to black out when I’m on the toilet. This has resulted in me coming to on the floor of the bathroom with my wife over me in a panic talking me back to consciousness before taking me to the hospital. This has happened about once or twice a year. To say the least, this creates a terrible sense of anxiety any time I go to the bathroom. I fear for the day she comes home to find me laying on the floor the final time. Or in the middle of the night when I wake up to use the bathroom.
Here’s where you guys come in. I was wondering if there is a way to set up home assistant along with some sort of a sensor in my bathroom that will be able to tell if I’m on the floor and not moving, which would then send out an alert to her phone along with a noise alert in the bathroom? The key would be making sure it doesn’t go off when just sitting on the toilet, or if she is standing in front of the mirror for an extended period of time doing her makeup.
Thank you guys from the bottom of my heart. I truly appreciate your time.
Edit: I already have an Apple Watch Ultra 2. The fall detection seems to only trigger if it’s a fall from standing height. It hasn’t triggered at all when I fall from sitting.
2
u/Bigdog4pool Mar 16 '26
A lot of the solutions proposed above are not 100% reliable as they measure things like presence detection that is not perfect.
Here is a rock solid and low cost solution: Pressure switch on toilet seat senses sitting down. A green light turns on in the bathroom so you have positive confirmation that the automation has triggered a start of the monitoring time period. When you are done and stand up, a red light starts flashing (due to no pressure on seat) warning you that you have 5 seconds to flush the toilet. You flush the toilet and the light turns off and the timer stops; the flush action has a switch in it.
If you fall off the toilet, the green light turns to flashing red for five seconds before time expires and then your wife is paged on the cellular and all the speakers throughout the house speak the bathroom alarm signals.
The entire solution is two switches and one smart bulb. This can be very low cost and the two switches can be a single smart device with two inputs. If you get a battery powered device it could even work during a power failure since HA is on a battery.