Alert watch / tracker for elderly parent

[Albta]

I’ve done a lot of a research and still cant quite work out what would work best!
looking for an alert watch for my elderly father which has an alert function and tracking.
key features:

1. GPS - as dont want to rely on him having his phone on him, near wifi or 3G signal (he has a large garden in the middle of nowhere with poor mobile reception)
2. long battery life. if he has to charge it up he will forget to put it back on

a pendant might work, but I don’t think he’ll wear it and possibly trickier to reach in a fall if under clothes.

any help greatly appreciated! 😀

Does he wear a watch because there is one pendant that goes on the watch strap.
You could look at a Hive system with cameras which can monitor movement eg they inform you if the person hasn’t left the bedroom at their usual time or there hasn’t been any movement in the accommodation for a couple of hours.
If there is poor mobile reception I don’t think GPS will work.

If it is to see where he is or in or out of the house I think putting an Apple air tag (or the Samsung equivalent if you have an android phone ) onto his keys would be easiest

If you feel he needs to be tracked, I am guessing he has cognitive problems?

Trackers which use GPS are likely to need to be regularly recharged. So is there someone who visits regularly and can wait while it recharges and ensure he puts it on again? Even if he does put it on, I would not rely on him to keep it on. My mother (who had dementia) had this type of tracker and took it off as soon as the carers left the flat. People with cognitive problems often see new items as an unwanted foreign body to be removed. There was no point putting it on her key ring because she would not necessarily take her keys when she left the flat.

It was at that point I started to make plans to move my mother to a care home, as she was at risk from wandering and falls.

We've tied an apple air tag to FIL's boot laces.

Thanks all.
I have a camera already set with alerts.
I think he would happily wear it - it’s more remembering to put it back on!
I actually hadn’t realised that GPS likely to bad where phone signal is bad, but that makes sense.
I think I’m going to just bite the bullet, this one seems to tick most boxes

https://personalalarms.org/agespace/products/suresafego-4?utm_source=agespace_reviews&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=landing_pageCTA2&utm_term=landing-page&utm_content=product_review

any specific recommendations?

We built compliance with wearing a falls alarm by checking randomly if it was on.

The oldie and my grandfather hated being in the wrong so it was easier to wear it than be caught without it!

The solution you suggested will still be reliant on the quality of phone networks that it's using. (which is O2, EE, and Vodafone) It's also quite expensive.

Perhaps you could consider using a pet tracker, as it works exactly the same way and has similar functionality.

in short, there may not be a single solution that will resolve your use case.

Just for clarification, whilst the GPS signal is sent from low earth orbit satellites, it's reliant on the phone network to relay the device's position back to the user.

I had a similar concern with a relative and used Philips Hue motion sensors in several rooms, so we could check he was up and about each morning, and be able to monitor the house temperature from the other end of the country. It was also possible to record history of movement over time, but we didn't bother.

Whilst it didn't track his location, it was remarkably helpful on many occasions.

(Hub and 4 sensors, £122, 2 X AAA batteries last 2-3 years, no subscription)