Interview with Alex Teichman

Gary Barg: Alex, how was Lighthouse developed?

Alex Teichman: I was working in the world of self-driving cars, getting them to understand what they see in the world. To recognize cars and pedestrians and bicyclists, that sort of thing. And for me, it was less about self-driving cars per se, it was more about getting computers to understand what they see in the world the way humans are able to do it. Like the way we see the world and understand what we’re looking at and then be able to take appropriate action. I quickly became very interested in deploying these kinds of computer vision capabilities out in the world to solve real problems. 

While at Stanford, I met my co-founder and CTO, Hendrik Dahlkamp. He was a core member of the winning team on the Darpa self-driving car challenges. He dropped out of the PhD program twice, got acquired by Google twice. And one of those became Google Street View.

It was during that period that we were very deeply immersed in the core technologies that now make Lighthouse possible. One good way to think about Lighthouse is that it is  the home camera reinvented with artificial intelligence. That it’s the home camera that you just say, “hey, what did the dog do while I was out this weekend?” “Or tell me if you don’t see the kids by 4 pm on weekdays while I’m out.” And it understands what dogs look like. It understands what kids look like and knows what time range you’re looking for.

Gary Barg: What problems do you see this solving for family caregivers?

Alex Teichman: We sent Lighthouse out into the world a few months ago and what we discovered was that some of our early customers were proactively using it for aging-in-place assistance. Of course, most seniors want to stay at home. I personally have had some experiences with my grandmother and I’m  keenly aware that the desired outcome is to not move to a nursing home for as long as possible. 

Lighthouse is very well suited to letting you set up alerts to tell you when someone’s patterns change. You can tell Lighthouse, “Hey, ping me if you don’t see anyone in the kitchen camera by 8 am every day.” If someone doesn’t show up in the kitchen by that time, then it’ll send you a notification. It won’t send you a notification if everything is going as normal. You just get the notification when something is out of the ordinary. Same sort of thing with asking, “Hey, tell me if you see someone downstairs in the middle of the night.” And it’ will. You just get those notifications that you care about.

We created Lighthouse because we saw what was going on with other home awareness systems and traditional home cameras a few years ago. And they’re very simplistic. They’re very good for live view and recording 24/7 footage and giving you access to it. But there’s not a whole lot more there. It’s very hard for you to get useful and actionable information out of that mountain of data.      

Gary Barg: Is there a way to set up parameters unique and specific to your loved one?    

Alex Teichman: What we can do are things like inactivity alerts or activity alerts for unusual time periods. That’s one of the things that it’s particularly good for. You can encode Lighthouse by saying, “Hey, tell me if you don’t see anyone in this three-hour time range in the middle of the day when I’m expecting to see somebody.” And then it tells you,

“I didn’t see someone during that time period and you were expecting to.” While it doesn’t have a full human level understanding of everything that is going on, it does have that most useful core piece of understanding about being able to tell you when those patterns are changing.         

Gary Barg: How easy is it to set up?

Alex Teichman: It’s very easy - a few minutes with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth configuration and that’s basically it. Then you open up the app and say, “Hey, tell me if you don’t see anyone by 7 am every day,” “Hey, tell me if you see someone between 10pm and 4am.” or “Tell me when you see someone waving hello.” 

If you have a caregiver scheduled and are expecting them at 3 pm on Tuesdays, you say “Hey, Tell me when you see someone at the front door at 3 pm on Tuesdays.” I want to see that caregiver coming and if you want to know if the caregiver sent somebody new one day, for example, you can say “Hey Lighthouse. Tell me if you see anyone you don’t recognize.”  Then anytime somebody new shows up, you get that notification about “Hey, there’s somebody new here. And maybe you want to take a look.” Maybe you even want to pop open two-way audio and say “Hey, I wasn’t expecting you. What’s your business here? “That sort of thing.  All of these things just work out of the box. For the unidentified face notifications, you do need to give it some examples of the people that are expected in that house.  

One of the big concerns my mother had with my grandmother was scammers wandering around the neighborhood. Taking advantage of old folks who were living alone. If she had Lighthouse setup at the front door, she could’ve gotten that notification anytime there was somebody new coming in. That would have made her feel a lot better, I suspect. 

Gary Barg: At its core, Lighthouse is a home camera. But it’s so much more. How is it different from other home camera systems on the market? 

Alex Teichman: Other home camera systems are basically designed to do live view, to do 24/7 cloud recording and then not a whole lot more than that. There are a few that have person detection. The standard thing is you get a notification when there is motion of any sort in the scene. 

And that's not especially useful because of shadows or pets moving around or headlights sweeping through the room. That sort of thing sets off those motion detectors. But what Lighthouse does is far beyond this. We have significantly more advanced computer vision capabilities. Rather than just getting an alert for any time there is motion or any time a person is seen, you can tell Lighthouse very explicit things like, “Ping me when you see someone around 3 pm on Tuesdays.”  There does not exist a home camera that can do anything like that. 

Gary Barg: What are you hearing from family caregivers about Lighthouse? 

Alex Teichman: One is actually my own mother’s example. She found that my grandmother would sometimes misplace her smartphone and then wouldn’t answer her calls and it’d be pretty nerve wracking. She lived an hour away from mom, so it was pretty hard  for her to get over there on short notice. What Lighthouse can do in that scenario is, “Oh, she’s not picking up. Okay, what’s going on? Let’s open up the camera, see if we see anything.” You can also open two-way talk from your phone and then have a conversation through Lighthouse with someone on the other end. In this case, the senior doesn’t even need their smartphone to have that conversation. And then it goes even a little further than that. This computer vision recognizes people waving hello. In this case, my grandmother could’ve just walked up to Lighthouse and waved hello. And this would send a push notification to my mother or to me and we would see an image of my grandmother on my phone.    Gary Barg: The other thing I like about this a lot is that it really respects your loved one’s sense of independence. 

Alex Teichman: And something we’re also finding that people really like is that it doesn’t require any changes in routine or wearing of the pendants that detect falling or that sort of thing. That was an issue with my grandmother when we had one of those pendants for her. She didn’t like to wear it when she was sleeping because she would roll onto it and it would be uncomfortable for her and she’d take it off but then forget to put it back on.  With Lighthouse, they don’t need to wear a device like that.  They don’t need to think about replacing batteries ever. They don’t need to change their daily routine. They don’t even need a smartphone. 

Gary Barg: How do I get Lighthouse?

Alex Teichman: Head on over to www.light.house and from there, you can find our page that is dedicated to extending golden years at home for your elderly loved one. You can purchase Lighthouse right from our website and we are, of course, also on Amazon.com. 

Gary Barg: What would be the one most important piece of advice you’d like to share with family caregivers? 

Alex Teichman: To me, the most important thing for a family caregiver is that they be able to maintain confidence in their living arrangements and be able to do so in a way that isn’t overly stressful on them. I saw this happening with my mother and my grandmother and it can be a really tough life situation. This goes beyond Lighthouse but I guess I would just look for any way you can to make that situation work. And I hope with new technologies like Lighthouse, that this helps.