Nimrod — free, private technology for patient care & recovery

What it's for

Built for patient care, first and always.

The focus of Nimrod is simple: do whatever technology can to help a patient recover and live better — and to give the people caring for them real tools.

🌤️

Improve quality of life

Give a disoriented patient something familiar and calming: their own photos, music, faces, and a clear window on the room around them.

🌱

Support recovery

Activities and exercises that learn from the patient and gently teach them to use the system — meeting them wherever their abilities are today, and growing with them.

🤝

Communication & advocacy

Help families communicate with and advocate for TBI, stroke, and other patients — a way to reach them, to give them a voice, and to keep a clear record of how they're doing.

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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.

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 Christine. 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 Christine. 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.

The default dashboard — live today

One calm, fullscreen surface that hosts everything as arrangeable modules.

🖼️

Photos

a familiar window

📷

Camera

rearview mirror

▶️

YouTube

+ sing-along

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Clock

orientation

Runs on what you already have. It's a web app — open it in a browser on a phone, tablet, computer, or an inexpensive Raspberry Pi and monitor. No special equipment, no vendor hardware.

Launch milestone: get these four default modules into the public open-source repository before opening any way to support the project.

Live now

Running at the bedside

Default dashboard — photos, rearview camera, YouTube + sing-along, clock
Runs in any modern browser — phone, tablet, PC, Mac, or Raspberry Pi
Your own media, served locally and able to run offline

Tested with a real patient

Proven, not yet default

Private video calls & silent check-in — the camera stays on her device
Accessible input — yes/no scanning, switch/tilt, press-to-play
Hands-free control — camera-based hand & color tracking, already built
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

Accounts & profiles — every person gets their own profile and dashboard
Module library — add and share modules; anyone can build one
Device-independent setups — your layout lives in your account, not on a machine
A private, on-device assistant to help set things up and lend a hand

The line we don't cross

Your personal data never leaves your machine.

🎥

Video stays between you

Calls and camera feeds flow directly between your own devices. The site relays a tiny "let's connect" handshake and nothing else.

🧠

The intelligence is local

The AI that handles a patient's private information runs on open-source models on your own computer. No outside service ever sees it.

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You keep your files

Photos and recordings live in a folder you own. The system points to them; it never hosts them or locks them away.

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.

Technology for quality of life, recovery, and care.