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The Attendant Caller

THE PROBLEM:  Our son has Duchenne's MD (genetic disease which destroys his muscles).In school our son could no longer raise his hand,

THE SOLUTION:   I bought a  bicycle red LED light (one with a steady mode), opened it up and afterprobing around, fixed wires to to points that would turn the lights on and off. Then I ran the wires to the outside of the light to a "micro switch" (a limited pressure switch). I mounted the light to the side of the back of his power wheelchair using the regular bicycle mounting clamp that came with the light and fitting the clamp over a piece of dowel (broomstick handle is another possibility) of the appropriate diameter that I screwed to existing holes in the back of the wheelchair. I also rigged a cast off vibrating pager in a similar fashion -- but with really long leads that run to the micro switch, so when I accompany my son to camp, he can "page" me in the middle of the night instead of calling and waking the other campers. He has the microswitch, and I run the wires across the room to where ever my bed is located and then wear the pager in my pocket (be careful -- don't tangle up in the wires at night!) I also found a commercial short range (150 feet or so) wireless pager that our son can use to page us for help when we aren't near by (e.g. we went outside to work in the yard). Due to his limited strength, I modified the pager "call" button to use a micro switch, too. (It's too bed the commercial wireless pager is too large to be comfortable in a pocket at night time.) To save on micro switches, I connected the micro switch to a standard two conductor jack from Radio Shack, and added mating jacks to the leads from the devices above.

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