Smart Home Notification System

This is a conceptual project. Since it might be implemented by the team at GE I have confidence that the technical complexity can be tackled.

In my household I have a specialized use case of the smart home: being able to notify someone in the home that an event is happening or has happened specifically a phone call or text message.

My wife has a business where she must turn down the volume (and turn off vibration) for both (she has two) of her cell phones for hours at a time. When she comes home she forgets to re-enable them. And even if she were to re-enable them, the phones are on the other side of the house. It is nearly impossible to hear the call ringtone or the text notification ringtone. Because we have a ranch style home, Bluetooth and wifi sometimes doesn't reach the other side and it definitely won't reach out into the garage or backyard.

I'm guessing my particular situation is not that uncommon. A phone call comes in from the son or daughter that their bike broke down or that they want to go to a friends house. The parent didn't hear the call because they were in the garage or doing laundry or in the bathroom or just too heads down working. The kid is left either stranded or takes off with the friend.

In the past decades ago, we had a home phone which was connected to a voicemail machine. We might have missed the call but at a glance in a particular room we could notice that a call came in.

In the more recent past, we had a multi-phone home system where there was a phone in each room. We were more likely to hear the call but if we missed it, again at a glance from any room we could know that a call had arrived. These days where we don't have home phones (at least I haven't for about 7 years), in order to know that a call arrived we would have to either carry around our phones or actively pick them up and constantly check them. But because we are at home doing chores, fixing meals, gardening, or relaxing, we are more likely to just ignore the phone until we had some indication that we had to pick it up and check it.

This project idea is to use a variant of the C by GE lightbulb as a per-room notification and relay device. Every room has one of these bulbs. They communicate to a central (GE) hub via a mesh protocol. Each bulb acts as both a BLE peripheral and central device. Each bulb, of course, contains a set of LEDs to light the room. But it also contains a few RGB LEDs, a speaker, and maybe a few other sensors. Lastly, it may also contain a USB port.

First and foremost, it must provide lighting in the room. A cell phone or inexpensive BLE remote or touch panel turns on and off the light. The BLE remote or touch panel could optionally be mounted on the wall just like the remotes for some ceiling fans. But if the bulb also had a motion or audio sensor, that could be used to turn on the bulb automatically. If it had a microphone, it could respond to voice command.

As for my specific notification scenario, this is how the system solves the issue:

• My wife is in the garage doing laundry. (This is not a stereotype. I used to do it but I dyed too many of her clothes.)

• My son calls needing a ride home because his bicycle tire is flat.

• My wife misses the call(s).

• She walks into the house. In the master bedroom she notices that the lamp is softly blinking red (red for my son, green for her husband). There may also be a soft audible ringtone emitting from the bulb.

• Knowing that her son called and she missed it, she goes to her cell phone to listen to the message.

How the system worked:

• An special app is installed on the cell phone.

• When a call arrives, the hub is notified.

• The hub has been programmed to alert certain rooms (bulbs) that a call from the son is coming. It could be all rooms or it could only be the non-kid rooms or maybe just the most frequented rooms.

• The hub signals to the desired bulbs via mesh protocol to blink fast and red when a call is coming in from the son.

• If the call hasn't been picked up and a message has been left, the app notifies the hub.

• The hub signals to the desired bulb to blink slow and red.

Variations:

• If each of the bulbs can detect presence, then the notification can be sent to the room that has someone in the room instead of or in addition to the pre-programmed rooms.

• Special garage or outdoor bulbs can be built to enhance the notification for those particular environments. For example, maybe instead of a soft audible alert it is a loud alert.

• Instead of using a notification light, maybe it communicates through the USB port to a special blinking picture frame containing my son that's sitting next to the table lamp. This is kind of pushing the bounds a bit but one could imagine a whole business segment of smart bulb accessories if the bulb could simply communicate with the items in its immediate vicinity.

• If the bulb also acted as a BLE central device, it could communicate with nearby accessories.

I understand that the complexity of putting a lot of electronics into a small bulb form factor can be daunting. But I know the GE team can do it.