Free · open source · private by design

Technology for quality of life, recovery, and care.

Nimrod is free software built to make daily life better and to support recovery for people with traumatic brain injury, stroke and other serious conditions. It is also built to help their families talk with them, speak up for them and stay close. It is private. You choose what goes on the screen. It runs on equipment you probably already own.

Try the full site — no account needed See a quick sample Get started — it’s free Take the guided tour

“Try the full site” opens the real thing — your own dashboards and setup, saved to this browser, no account. “See a quick sample” is a quick look at one seeded screen, nothing saved. “Get started” signs you in with Google, just to save your setup to an account across devices — no password to create.

Free for everyone Private  nothing personal leaves your device Open source Runs on gear you own

Try it

This is the actual software. Press play.

No account. Nothing to install, and nothing to remove afterwards. This is the same software a real screen runs. Only two things differ. These are sample photos. The settings are kept in this browser, not in an account.

Nothing here asks for your camera. On a real bedside screen, that panel can be a rear-view mirror of the room. For somebody who cannot turn their head, that is the whole point. The picture never leaves the device.

What it's for

Built for patient care, first and always.

Nimrod has one aim. Do whatever technology can to help a person recover and live better. And give the people caring for them real tools.

Improve quality of life

Give a person who feels lost something familiar and calming. Their own photos, music and faces. A clear view of the room around them.

Support recovery

Activities and exercises that set their level by how the person is doing. They start where the person is today and grow with them.

Communication & advocacy

Help families talk with, and speak up for, people with traumatic brain injury, stroke and other conditions. A way to reach them. A way to give them a voice. A way to keep a clear record of how they are doing.

Free, private, and yours

Open source and free. Private by design — your cameras, files, and data stay on your own hardware. A modular ecosystem to fit your needs, and it runs on equipment you probably already own.

Nimrod is not a nurse call or an emergency system.

Although Nimrod is being built first for one person's recovery, it's designed to be useful for everyone. The more people who use it, the more who build modules for it — and a thriving community makes it better for every patient and family who comes next.

Backstory

My fiancée suffered a traumatic brain injury and multiple strokes.

She was emerging from a coma in a skilled nursing facility that was unfamiliar to her. Because of her strokes, her head was turned so that she could only see the exterior wall. I was scrambling to do whatever I could to improve her quality of life there while managing her care and trying to navigate all of the unfamiliar medical and legal territory that came with it.

It started with a digital picture frame to give her something to look at, and her old phone and a Bluetooth speaker for music. I then added a smart display — a camera and screen I could video-call — so I could actually see her and check in when I wasn't there. It helped, but it was far from private. I knew she'd never wanted a device like that in our room, but she was defenseless and unable to communicate in a place that was unfamiliar to me as well. I hated leaving her there — but unfortunately, you can't be there with them all the time. In the short run, being able to see her and know she was okay outweighed the privacy concerns — but it's a big part of why everything I built afterward is private by design.

I quickly realized how scary and disorienting the whole thing must be for her — not being able to see who was coming or going, or what was being done to her. I already had a Raspberry Pi and a webcam. I got an inexpensive monitor and set everything up in her room so the webcam could act as a rearview mirror, showing her what was behind her. That was the beginning of the computer system I started building to help us through her recovery.

As I developed it, it became clear that it could help other people too — and I'm now working to make that happen. I want to build something that is free for everyone and can run on whatever electronics they already have: simple enough for patients with severe cognitive deficits, and deep enough to offer them and their loved ones everything I possibly could to help.

I want to be straightforward about one thing: my primary goal will always be helping my fiancée. Whatever her current needs and abilities are will dictate my focus.

A note on how this was made: I don't have an extensive programming background. I built it with AI tools and existing open-source work, paying close attention to detail and testing everything thoroughly — first at home, then with her. Help from experienced developers would be more than welcome.

Where the project stands

Real, running software — not a mockup.

This isn't a concept. A working dashboard has been in use for months at a bedside, and a deep library of accessible modules has already been tested with a real patient. That bedside system is where Nimrod came from. What you can sign up for today is the shared version of it — the same ideas, rebuilt so anyone can run them from their own account. Some of the bedside modules have made that trip already; the rest are on their way.

The default dashboard — live today

One calm, full screen page. Everything on it is a module you can move around.

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Runs on what you already have. It runs in a web browser. Open it on a phone, a tablet, a computer, or an inexpensive Raspberry Pi (a small computer) and a monitor. No special equipment. Nothing you must buy from one company.

Every finished module, today

A screen is built from modules. This list is made as you read it, from the same list the site offers you when you build a screen. So it cannot name something the software does not have.

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Every module named above is in the public code. Nothing here is a mockup. This list is not written by hand. It is made from modules_catalog.js, the same file the site reads when you build a screen. So a module cannot be listed here unless it exists. And a module cannot be taken out of the software and still be listed here. This list used to be written by hand. For weeks it listed a starting module that had been removed.

The screen they use is built for one button. Setting it up is not.

Whatever they can move, bound to whatever they need to do

Most software expects a mouse. Some people can only press a switch. They may press it with a hand, a cheek or a shoulder, and it may take them seconds. For them, software that expects a mouse shuts them out. So the controls came first, and everything else is built on them.

It fits the person

  • Bind anything to anything. A switch, an adaptive button, a game controller, a dial or a keyboard. Each one does what you choose.
  • Set to fit a body. How long a press must be held. How long before it repeats. What to ignore as a tremor or a bounce.
  • One switch reaches the whole bedside screen. Step between panels, then choose. Setting it up the first time takes a keyboard and a mouse.

It follows the person

  • The setup belongs to the person, not to one machine. Set it once. It works on any screen they sit at.
  • Someone else can help from another screen. A clinician or a relative gets the same controls. The screen always says when this is happening.
  • Choose who may press things while you fix something, then change it back.

It tells you why nothing happened

  • “What can I press right now?” — because the answer is different for every person, and there is no manual to check.
  • “Why did that do nothing?” A dead switch. A wrong binding. A hold time set too long. A panel with nothing to say. These are 4 different repairs that look the same. Each one gets its own sentence.
  • Is it even plugged in? This is checked first, so nobody tries to fix a switch that is in a drawer.

Live now

Working today

  • Default dashboard — photos, rearview camera, YouTube, clock
  • Runs in any modern browser — phone, tablet, PC, Mac, or Raspberry Pi
  • Your own photos and videos, read from your own machine. They keep playing if the connection to the site drops.
  • Accounts and people — sign in and every person gets their own screen
  • A setup that goes with you — your layout is kept in your account, not on one machine
  • Any control, on any screen — a switch, a button, a dial or a keyboard, bound once and working everywhere

Tested with a real patient

Proven, not yet default

  • Private video calls & silent check-in — the camera stays on their device
  • Hands-free control — camera-based hand & color tracking
  • Communication & play — AAC board, word / match games, sing-along
  • Vision Probe — a caregiver-run visual-response check, in early testing

Planned

On the build path

  • Module library — add and share modules; anyone can build one
  • Bring your own AI — connect a model you control, on your own machine if you like

The line I don’t cross

Your photos, video, and files never leave your machine.

Video stays between you

Calls and camera pictures go straight between your own devices. The site passes along a tiny “let’s connect” message and nothing else.

Any intelligence runs on your machine

Where Nimrod uses AI, it runs on the computer in front of you — not in someone's data center, and not on your files sitting in someone else's cloud. No warehouse of servers burning power to look at your family photos, and nothing sent away to be analyzed.

You keep your files

Photos and recordings stay in a folder you own. Nimrod only points to them. It never holds them and never locks them away.

Here is everything the site's server really holds

This is not a promise. It is a live list. The table below is made from the site's own records as it runs. So it cannot quietly go out of date as the project grows. If I add a new place to keep something and forget to explain it, it shows here marked as undescribed. It is never left out.

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Nothing here is collected because somebody made an account. Every row exists because of something you did — the third column says what. Turn a thing off and it stops. Anything I add later arrives switched off and needs its own separate yes.

You do not have to take my word for any of it. The whole thing is open source. You can read exactly what is kept and what is sent. The code is public.

What's next

From one bedside to something anyone can use.

The same foundation that runs one patient's screen becomes a system anyone can set up for a loved one: personal accounts and profiles, a setup you can open on any device, and a growing library of modules that the community can extend — eventually including tools for the therapists, nurses, and other caregivers who support them, not just families. The built-in assistant grows into a private, on-device companion — helping families set things up, turning recordings into a clear record for a clinician to review, and eventually taking simple spoken requests, all without anything private ever leaving the home, hospital, or care facility.

It's also built to connect to the tools people already use. Planned integrations include Home Assistant, Alexa, and Google Home — and, through the same modules and shared bus that run the screen, the ability for a patient to control their own environment: lights, a thermostat, a fan, whatever matters to them, using whatever input they can — a switch, a look, a tap, or their voice. The setup assistant is itself one of these integrations, and clear, open documentation for every module lets people, and their own AI tools, understand, extend, and connect to the system.

What it runs on

Probably something you already own.

The cheapest machine I have run it on is a Raspberry Pi 400. That is the little computer built into a keyboard. It costs about the price of a night out. It also runs on any laptop or desktop you already have. The screen can be a monitor or a television.

There is no single smallest computer it needs, and I am not going to make one up. What it needs depends on which modules you run. Photos and a clock need almost nothing. Video calls and camera tracking need a good deal more. Start with what you have. If it is too slow you will know within a minute, and you will have spent nothing.

How long does a first setup take? Where do people get stuck? I cannot answer honestly yet. Nobody has done a whole setup from start to finish and timed it. When somebody has, the real numbers will go here.

For care facilities and clinicians

It is free. There is nothing to procure.

No license to pay for, no contract, no purchase order and no supplier to sign up. If a resident’s family wants this, the whole answer is send them the link. It runs on a machine somebody already owns. It touches no facility systems. It uses the facility network only for ordinary internet access.

Do you work with people this might help, and want to talk it through? Or have you found something that does not work for your residents? Write to nimrodecosystem@gmail.com.

If you build things

Your switch, your button, your enclosure.

A ready-made adaptive switch costs roughly $75 wired or $145 wireless. An arcade button, a microcontroller (a tiny computer on a chip) and a printed case come to about $15. Set the microcontroller up to act as a USB keyboard or game controller and it needs no driver (extra software) in any browser. Plug it in and bind it to anything on the screen.

Nimrod does not sell equipment and has none to sell. This is software that works with what you, or a maker near you, can build. It treats switches, buttons, dials and game controllers as ordinary devices. What each one does is set for each person, not for each device.

Join in

Free to use. Open to build on.

Nimrod is free, open source, and independent. Nothing you build here is locked to us — your boards, your settings and your data stay with you. Create an account to use it, or help build the thing that makes it better for the next family.

Get started — it’s free Sign in View the code

“Get started” and “Sign in” both use Google to sign in. There is no password to make.