Fall detection is a great feature to include in our personal mobile alarms. Have you ever wondered how it works? LiveLife Alarms offer two alarms which can detect falls. They are our 4GX 2024 model Live Life Alarm Pendant and our 2024 model 4GX Live Life Watch. With either of these personal mobile alarms we encourage you to gently toss your pendant or watch onto a soft carpeted floor from at least waist height or higher at some time soon after you receive it so you can get a feel for what happens when your alarm detects a fall. Just make sure you’ve told your emergency contacts you’re testing so they don’t get worried. Also, while we’re on the subject, make sure you give out the phone number of your mobile pendant or watch to your emergency contacts so they can add your alarm as a contact in your phone. Maybe they’ll call it “Dads alarm” or “Mums watch”. Anyway, let’s get into it. Let’s learn how fall detection has been designed in the Live Life Alarm and Watch. PS: If you ever have questions please call customer support on 1800 936 774 option 2.
Live Life Pendant
Fall detection in your LiveLife Mobile Pendant will work when the pendant is serviceable (turned on and in working order) and in an area with available Telstra mobile network coverage.
The pendant has inbuilt sensors designed to detect unbroken falls or the kind of fall more likely to result in unconsciousness. We test fall detection at 700mm, 1 metre and 1.2 metres height above the ground. It measures the impact, angle and speed of a fall in order to ascertain if a fall has probably occurred.
Fall detection is designed to pick up more violent falls where there is likely to be significant impact against the ground. The fall detection sensitivity can easily be decreased or increased by the user, however, the lower the sensitivity the less likely the device is to detect a fall. We suggest the default setting of 5. If you’d like to know how this is done refer to page 14 of the User Manual here.
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If we make the fall detection sensitivity too sensitive then this can quickly become annoying for our customers as even though there is an audible warning that the device thinks a fall has occurred, it can be a hassle clicking the SOS/Heart button to cancel it in repeated false alarms.
When your pendant detects a fall the pendant will announce in a loud, clear voice “Fall has been detected, click the SOS/Heart button to cancel the fall alert sequence”. This will be repeated twice before sending out ‘fall down alert’ text messages to the programmed emergency contacts and the alarm will then start calling them. You can listen to what the fall alert audio sounds like by clicking here.
Fall detection technology is not perfect and false alarms can occur, however, as you can hear, the wearer will be given the chance to cancel the fall alert if it is a false alarm. Fall detection can be turned off by sending a simple text command to the pendant from a mobile phone or the fall detection can be made less or more sensitive by the user.
The LiveLife Alarm cannot detect every fall, as every fall is different. For example, it may not be activated automatically if someones fall is blocked by an object, they brace themselves as they fall or perhaps if they slump or roll to the floor. If you are conscious and able to, it is recommended to press the personal alarm SOS/Heart manually, with one short, sharp press. If you’re worried about falling from a wheelchair, which is approximately a seating position, or approximately 485mm above the ground, then we would recommend that you don’t rely on the fall detection feature, as the height of the chair is lower then fall detection was designed for. With that said, we would encourage you to test the fall detection feature of your alarm soon after you receive it, by dropping the alarm onto the floor in a simulated manner. You can always change the sensitivity of the fall detection by referring to the manual or by calling us. For people in a wheelchair, we recommend that you click the SOS/Heart button if you fall out of your wheelchair.
If you’d like to learn more about all the features of the Live Life Alarm pendant, please click here.
Live Life Watch
Fall detection in your LiveLife Mobile Watch will work when the pendant is serviceable (turned on and in working order) and in an area with available Telstra mobile network coverage.
The pendant has inbuilt sensors designed to detect unbroken falls or the kind of fall more likely to result in unconsciousness. Your watch measures the impact, angle, speed and impact of a fall in order to ascertain if a fall has probably occurred.
Fall detection is designed to pick up more violent falls where there is likely to be significant impact against the ground. If you’d like to learn more about the LiveLife Watch and fall detection in general refer to page 2 of the User Manual here.
Your LiveLife Watch can detect a fall. When this occurs the watch will give a warning message on the watch screen to the wearer and will play an audio warning. You can listen to what the fall alert audio sounds like by clicking here. The wearer has 10 seconds to cancel the fall alarm on the watch face. It is easy to change the fall detection sensitivity but we recommend it is kept at default setting 5. For more info, refer to page 2 of the User Manual here.
If it is not cancelled in time the watch will send a fall alert text message (with the wearer’s location on Google Maps) to the programmed emergency contact numbers followed by the outgoing calls.
When you first receive your LiveLife Watch you may drop it gently or toss it on to carpet if you want to see the the fall alert sequence in action. After that however we do not advise you to attempt to test the fall detection yourself multiple times. Every fall is different due to the variables involved. Over testing the feature may result in injury or the device being damaged. Do not deliberately drop or throw the watch at a hard surface to test it. Please don’t try and test it by falling as hard as you can onto the ground as you may seriously hurt yourself. Sorry we had to say that!
Fall detection technology is not perfect and false alarms can occur, however, as you can hear, the wearer will be given the chance to cancel the fall alert if it is a false alarm. Fall detection can be turned off by sending a simple text command to the pendant from a mobile phone.
The LiveLife Watch cannot detect every fall, as every fall is different. For example, it may not be activated automatically if someones fall is blocked by an object, they brace themselves as they fall or perhaps if they slump or roll to the floor. If you are conscious and able to, it is recommended to press the watch side SOS button manually, with a two second press. Because the watch is worn on the wrist a fall from some heights may not trigger the fall detection. Because it measures the speed of impact using a 3D accelerometer it is possible a fall from a height of less than a metre such as a sitting position may not meet the heavy fall criteria. If you’re worried about falling from a wheelchair, which is approximately a seating position, or approximately 485mm above the ground, then we would recommend that you don’t rely on the fall detection feature, as the height of the chair is lower then fall detection was designed for. With that said, we would encourage you to test the fall detection feature of your watch soon after you receive it, by dropping the watch onto the floor in a simulated manner. You can always change the sensitivity of the fall detection by referring to the manual or by calling us. For people in a wheelchair, we recommend that you click the side SOS button if you fall out of your wheelchair.
If you’d like to learn more about all the features of the Live Life Alarm watch, please click here.