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Utilize Smart Remote Controls to Protect Parents Living Apart from Heatstroke

In the article "How IoT Can Help Protect the Elderly with Dementia from Heat Stroke" written in this column in 2024, I described my experience of using a smart remote control to remotely operate the air conditioner in my distant family home to protect my mother from heat stroke.

A smart remote control is an IoT device that allows you to remotely operate home appliances using a smartphone app. By linking appliances such as air conditioners and televisions with the smartphone app in advance, it can be utilized. There are types that allow you to check the temperature and humidity of the room where the smart remote control is installed in real-time through the linked app, making it very convenient.

As people age, they become less able to sweat, may not feel thirsty, and due to dementia, their sense of the seasons may diminish, making it difficult for them to use air conditioning properly, which increases the risk of heat stroke. My mother, who lives in Iwate, has dementia and cannot understand that it is summer now, nor can she operate the air conditioning.

Therefore, living in Tokyo, I use a smart remote control to remotely operate the air conditioner at my parents' house and manage the room temperature. While I find it very convenient, I also realized that there are three unexpected pitfalls, so I will introduce them along with solutions.

1. The room temperature does not match the air conditioning set temperature.

For example, let's say you set the air conditioner's cooling temperature to 27°C using a smart remote. Even so, it is often the case that the room temperature does not reach 27°C.

The reason is the airtightness of the house. In a house with high airtightness, the room temperature is expected to be close to the set temperature. However, my family home in Iwate is an old house that is over 50 years old, with low airtightness, and cold air escapes through the gaps in the building, making it difficult for the room to cool down.

Therefore, if you do not set the temperature to 22℃, the room temperature will not reach 27℃. Additionally, due to low airtightness, it is also easily influenced by the outside temperature. On extremely hot days when the maximum temperature exceeds 35℃, the cooling effect of the air conditioning becomes poor, and even if it is set to the minimum temperature of 18℃, the room temperature may not drop below 27℃. In this way, even if you set the air conditioner temperature with a smart remote control, it is recommended not to be complacent and to always check the room temperature in real-time to find the optimal setting.

Also, even if the air conditioner is cooling the room, there are times when my parents, who live far away, leave the doors and windows open. My mother, who has dementia, seems to think that if she opens the doors and windows, the breeze from outside will come in and cool things down, but she ends up letting the cold air escape, and the room temperature set by the smart remote control does not get reached.

As a measure for doors and windows, it is advisable to install surveillance cameras. If it seems that the cool air from the air conditioner is escaping, you should call and ask them to close the doors or windows.

2. The parent accidentally operates the air conditioner's main remote control.

Even if you operate remotely with a smart remote control, it is not sufficient as a heatstroke prevention measure if your parents living far away use their remote control to turn off the air conditioner or change the temperature settings.

In fact, smart remote controls have adopted the Matter standard, and models are emerging that reflect the operations performed on the air conditioner's remote control in real time on a smartphone app. This allows parents to immediately grasp any changes in settings or temperature adjustments when they press the air conditioner's switch.

In my house, my mother once accidentally pressed the buttons on the remote control, turning on the heating in the middle of summer. Now, considering the risk of heatstroke, I no longer keep the remote control for the air conditioner in the house, and I operate everything remotely.

3. A system failure occurs on the smart remote control side.

Occasionally, the company providing the smart remote control may experience a system failure, causing the smart remote control to become unusable. In our home, we experienced system failures twice during the scorching months. At that time, we were fortunate that the air conditioner was on before the failure occurred, but we were unable to turn off the air conditioner remotely.

Therefore, in our home, we installed two smart remote controls from different manufacturers in the same room, so that if one becomes unusable due to a malfunction, we can operate the other one remotely. In case of an issue, we first check the voices of other users on SNS X to see if similar incidents are occurring, and wait for an announcement from the company after that.

While recovery often occurs quickly, losing access to air conditioning during extreme heat can be life-threatening, so let's consider measures to take in the event of a system failure.

It's important to not overly rely on convenient IoT devices and to think carefully about countermeasures.

By installing a smart remote control, it is believed that the risk of heatstroke for parents living far away can be reduced. However, as mentioned earlier, there are cases where even if the air conditioner is operated remotely, it may not reach the set temperature due to unexpected behavior from the parents or system malfunctions. Even IoT devices, which are supposed to be convenient, may not work as expected, so caution is necessary. To protect parents' lives from heatstroke, we should think carefully about countermeasures.