Frequently Asked Questions

Ideally, ABBY is mounted onto a wall in a ‘wandering hallway’, in an area large enough to accommodate social interaction, while also being easily observable from a nursing station.

In Ontario we do most of the installs...

Yes, of course. ABBY comes with a 1 year warranty.

ABBY weighs 35 kilograms (78 pounds).

Yes, ABBY comes preconfigured with a default/public profile and can be used without any other profiles being configured on the system. When the default profile is active we say that ABBY is working in "public mode".

First and foremost we need information about the resident, the more the better. A resident profile is developed in collaboration with staff and family members. If a resident has lost their English(their second language), we can create a profile in their language(1st language). If a family member would like to be the voice the resident hears, we are happy to record them as well.

The following is a list of questions you may want to ask a family member, caregiver or even the resident:

• What is/was their favourite music, movie, actor, actress?
• What is/was their favourite animal (when they pet the interactive cat on Abby, perhaps a horse would appear or a dog)?
• When they were younger what did they like to do? Examples bike, boat, motorcycle, swim, hike, fish, ski?
• What is/was their favourite sport?
• Etc., etc., etc.

If family has pictures of the resident when he/she was younger (or maybe videos that were taken a while ago) and if the family members think they would trigger positive memories, such material would build a great profile.

Pictures from when they were between the ages of 15-25 are excellent because that seems to be the time in life that they remember. Pictures of people they do not remember does not help, they would prefer to see pictures from when they were young, with family and friends. If the Pictures are printed and no digital copy of the pictures exists, they can be sent to us to be digitized. You can also scan the pictures yourself and just send us the digital copies, but please make sure the pictures are scanned in high resolution, according to the guidelines below.

As far as Videos and Music goes, we will gather as much of it as possible, but if you could help us by providing us with direct links to a source containing the videos and music the resident would like, that would be great. We suggest finding the content of YouTube and sending to us direct links to that content, for both music and videos.

So, You gather all of this information and send it to us (we recommend you do that via WeTransfer.com, it's free up to 2 GB at a time and you can send as many times as you wish), we will put everything together, upload the files into ABBY and as a final step we will assign a beacon to the resident and send it to you. ABBY is now ready for that resident.

Photos and Images ( file format/extension is .jpg or .png):
- All Images should be of good quality with minimum image resolution of 1920px by 1080px;

Audio files - music and tv shows ( file format/extension is .mp3 ):
- Audio file should be of good quality;
- File format should be MP3, or converting will be required;
- Songs should be short, no live concerts and such;
- Songs should start right away or in 2sec latest. Downloads from Youtube often have a long introduction and when converted to just audio the introduction becomes silence at the beginning/end of the song. Example: If radio knob is turned and no music is playing for 10 seconds, the resident might just skip and go to the next one and by doing so miss the good content, or they might simply walk away;

Videos ( file format/extension is .mp4 ):
- Videos should be of good quality, not blurry or too dark, etc.;
- Ideally videos should be of HD quality. If this is not possible “Standard Definition” is the minimum we should go for (which means video resolution of 480px in height at least), because videos on the AAT system are scaled to full size HD (1080px high) and don’t look good if original resolution is less than 480px;
- Audio in the Videos should be Stereo (two speakers), not Mono (one speaker);

We recommend using the WeTransfer.com online service for sending any digital files to us. Sending up to 2GB is free, transfers are encrypted and you can send as many times as you wish. Here you can see a short how-to article on how to do a transfer.

After removing your Beacon from its packaging, open the Beacon with a coin or flat tool, pull out the yellow tab underneath the battery, ensure the positive terminal of the battery is facing up and close the Beacon as shown below. This turns the Beacon on. It’s advisable to leave your Beacon with the yellow tab underneath the battery in place until ready to use.

The Beacon has one CR2032 3V coin-cell battery that will typically power the Beacon for approximately 2 months. If you notice that a profile does not become active when a beacon is in close proximity to ABBY, the battery might need to be replaced.

1. Open the Beacon with a coin (or flat tool)
2. Remove and properly dispose of the old battery
3. Install a new CR2032 3V coin-cell battery with positive terminal facing up
4. Close the beacon

No, battery level has no impact on transmit signal strength. It'll transmit until the battery depletes and the very last signal before then will be just as strong as the first.

Make sure the beacon has a good battery and place it infront of ABBY. Wait for about 5 seconds to be sure the system has recognised the beacon and interact with any of the tangible activities. If the beacon is recognised by the system you will see the resident's name popping up on the bottom right corner of the touchscreen, for about 3 seconds. If nothing comes up, try another beacon to make sure the system is not at faoult. If nothing works, please give us a call for further assistance.

If a beacon gets lost, please feel free to contact us by phone: 1-800-563-7740 or by email: info@ambientactivity.com and we will configure and send you a new one. The cost for replacing a beacon is $25CAD.