Pulse: a camera that watches when carers can't

A camera that watches when carers can't.

WEEK 8 · PROTOTYPE · SHOWCASED 7 OCT 2026

WHERE THINGS STAND

Four things worth knowing before you read further.

Pulse is a device that watches over bedridden patients in the hours between carer rounds. A CNN-LSTM pipeline reads facial pain expression over time, a separate pose model tracks movement out of bed, and planned environmental sensors will add a fuller read on patient state, so problems are caught continuously instead of at the next check.

01 · THE PROBLEM

Nobody is in the room at 3am.

Up to four hours can pass between rounds for a patient who can't call for help. We're aiming to close that gap to closer to forty-one seconds.

02 · THE APPROACH

Two branches: a face, or a body.

In bed, a blanket hides the body, so Pulse reads the face. Out of bed, a pose model reads 17 body keypoints instead. Environmental sensors, planned next, add context from the room itself for a fuller read on patient state.

03 · WHERE IT IS NOW

A laptop, a webcam, and a CAD file.

DONEFace and pose detection
DONECNN trained on pain expressions
DONELSTM pain score
DONEWorking prototype with a live carer dashboard
IN PROGRESSThe 8cm cube, hardware arrived for assembly

04 · WHAT'S NEXT

After the showcase.

We showcased Pulse on 7 October 2026. Next: calibrating with more people, testing how a clinic dataset holds up in a dark bedroom, room sensors, and a browser-only demo of the dashboard.

Read the full project

We'd rather show the project at this stage than wait for one that looks finished.

THE RECORD

We're building Pulse in public.

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