Benjamin is 17 (born 1996) and has severe learning difficulties, does not
talk at all and is autistic.
Among other issues he has
epilepsy.
His epilepsy is generally well controlled with
medication (he has a couple of seizures a year), but when he does have a seizure
it tends to be a big one (tonic-clonic or grand-mal - the classic limb shaking
eplleptic seizure).
Last time he had one he stopped breathing completely and we ended up resuscitating him followed by a blue light trip to hospital.
I installed a simple analogue video monitor system in our house when he started having fits so we can keep an eye on him to make sure he is ok. I just happened to notice his last fit because I looked up while we were having breakfast and thought his movement looked a bit odd on the screen. This is fine, but you have to be looking at the screen for it to be any use.
This got me thinking that it would be good to have something that would raise an alarm to tell us he was having a fit, rather than relying on us watching a monitor. So in about February 2013 I started work on a seizure detector for Benjamin, and this project is the result (I don't do anything quickly!).