MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia
MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia
Today marks two years since I first set up an e-ink display in my mom’s apartment to help her live on her own with amnesia.
Good he found the right gadget for the job. I'm happy it works and has improved the mother's life.
It's frustrating that subscription-based product enshittification is so ubiquitous that avoiding it needed to be included as a constraint, and even pointing that out feels banal and trite for how much it's the default.
20Yeah, this was uplifting! It's kind of terrifying to think that she could just feel abandoned and anxious 5 minutes after talking to her children. But this looks like a good counter to that.
I hear digital photo frame advertisements on podcasts all the time and they all trumpet how easy it is to send pictures to relatives and friends! My first thought is: what happens to the frame if you stop paying? Worse , what if they go bankrupt, get bought out, change terms, etc? I'm sure you won't be able to send pictures anymore and that everything's locked down and proprietary...
9Yep.
I have an older frame that has an email option so people can send photos to the frame.
I bought it because it supports both USB thumbdrive and connects to SAMBA shares for photos, too, which is how I use it. Never even signed up for the service, and I've blocked internet access for it (bastardin' bastards designed the network stack to require DNS entries, picks).
The setup is annoyingly clunky, but once setup it does work fine.
My next one will start with a Raspberry Pi, then it's just a generic Linux box.
9
That's really sweet to hear that it actually made a positive impact.
10Interesting to hear that she's able to remember this exists, despite not being able to form any other new memories.
4To quote the author:
Memory isn’t just one neurological system, so very occasionally she will able to remember certain types of things.
Also I assume this board is placed in a location that make it obvious and visible to anyone walking in the room.
6I just met with a great-aunt who has been a bit distant until now. A rare time for me meeting with relatives of her generation since I ran out of living grandparents about a decade ago (though thankfully I at least hear from most of them from mom occasionally).
We talked about some of our common relatives of her generation and some have dementia-related anterograde amnesia not quite unlike the OP's mother. At least some of them can at least remember "new" things like the very fact that their memory doesn't work right, but a lot of it is down to luck and conditioning, and even then it's really hard to always consider that something might have happened hours or minutes ago, but you just forgot about it.
Memory is hella complex is what I'm saying.
8
I need this.
A person of adhd with tremendously awful handwriting
3Hey, thanks for this. I have an elderly parent that just moved into a new senior living apartment. I was looking for something like this and stumbled on your project a couple weeks back. While I’m not implementing the same as you, the inspiration has been invaluable. I’m going a cheaper route with a pi zero and a secondhand e-ink display, plan is to put my version up online and link to yours for inspiration if that’s ok (and if I ever get enough time to finish and document).
1I am not the author. You can find them on mastodon.
2m not the author. You can find them on mastodon.
I will, thanks!
2