Is There a Simple Way to Video Chat With My Elderly Parents?
The pandemic has been rough on everyone, especially when it comes to maintaining connection with the people we love. Luckily, technology allows us to maintain these connections in all sorts of useful ways. It can be especially challenging, however, when you’re trying to stay in touch with someone who isn’t as technologically savvy or is otherwise limited because of age or circumstance.
Lifehacker reader Lorisa recently wrote to Tech 911 with her dilemma: "My siblings and I live in same country but not same city as my mom; therefore, we would like to set up a video time with her. Any technology would have to pre-program ahead of time as all the facility would do is plug into the power but they would not do anything else due to the many policies in place. Our mom would not be cognitive enough to know and push on the tablet."
Consider a smart display for far-away family members
Whatever technological setup you’re going to use to connect to your mom is going to have to be something that’s absurdly easy to operate. Since the senior-care facility workers won’t mess with a device for you, and will only really plug it in, we have to rule out any kind of laptop-based setup. Someone would have to turn those on, after all, and I doubt they’re going to want to keep a laptop running 24/7 in your mom’s room. You could set up and angle a smartphone to face your mom and just dial in to that, but that’s an awfully small picture for your mom to deal with.
I think there’s an even better solution: purchase a smart display for your mom. (I like Google’s Nest Hub Max.) Smart displays are pretty foolproof. Once you plug one in and set it up, it’s going to be fairly self-sufficient; it’ll update itself as needed, reconnect to the internet if it ever goes down, and the most troubleshooting it’ll probably ever need is a quick unplug and plugging back in.
Comparison of Communication Devices
| Device Type | Potential Limitations or Benefits |
|---|---|
| Laptop | Someone would have to turn those on; facility workers likely won't keep it running 24/7. |
| Smartphone | An awfully small picture for the elderly to deal with. |
| Tablet | User may not be cognitive enough to know and push on the screen. |
| Smart Display | Pretty foolproof; fairly self-sufficient; updates itself as needed. |
How to Setup and Control the Device Remotely
There is one little quirk you’ll want to address when you go to set up the smart display before dropping it off at your mom’s facility. You’ll need to have some kind of phone number to associate with it—well, with Google Duo, technically. You’ll probably want to make a new, dummy Google account for all of this, append a Google Voice phone number, and then add your primary Google account as a member of the household (so you can control the smart display from afar).
Also, maybe as part of the drop-off process, you can plug the display in near enough to the facility that you’ll be able to set it up on their wifi. That’s the key part of this whole process. You then have two options to launch video chats—assuming your mom isn’t capable of answering them herself:
- You can make a routine in the Google Home app for your mom’s account that calls your personal phone number (or whatever number you use with Google Duo) when activated.
- You can also use the built-in “Camera” feature within the Google Home app to pull up a live feed from the smart display (and talk to it).
I like the Google Duo approach myself, as I think it’s a more elegant solution. It might seem a little backwards to use a separate device to initiate a call from your mother’s smart display, but that’s the best solution for maintaining a visual connection when the user is not cognitive enough to operate the hardware.