Elderly flood victims stuck upstairs depend on boats and baskets for cooked meals
At Rom Klao in Lat Krabang the Nation Foundation used boats to reach residents; elderly people in Soi 17 stayed on second floors and lowered baskets to collect food, and ready-to-eat food was needed most because many elders struggled to wade out for meals.
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Hardware and sensors
Window Button: a LoRa button that works with no internet and lights up at the boat
An elderly person presses a big button by the window and a battery-powered LoRa radio sends 'meal wanted' to a box on the boat captain's phone. It works with the power and phone signal down. A light on the button turns green when the boat has seen the request.
Build with Heltec LoRa32 or ESP32 with SX1262, arcade button, LiPo battery, receiver on a phone via BLE
Camera and vision
Basket Spotter: a boat camera that spots hanging baskets and counts stops
Elders lower baskets or hang a bright flag to say they need food. A phone on the boat films the alley, Claude vision spots baskets and flags, and counts the stops with a pin on the map. The kitchen knows how many boxes to pack before the boat reaches the end.
Build with Phone on boat mount, Claude vision, Leaflet map, laminated colored flags
AI agent
Meal Run Planner: turns every request into one boat route and prints the stop sheet
The agent collects requests from the buttons, the phone line and the kitchen's list. It orders the stops to cut boat time and shallow-water detours, and prints one sheet for the captain with house, count and what each elder needs. One boat covers ten lanes in an order that makes sense.
Build with Claude, OpenStreetMap routing, Google Sheets, PDF print
Voice and phone
Hello Meal Line: elders phone a number, say what they need, and the kitchen sees it
An elder phones one number on any phone and says 'two boxes of rice with soft food, I live at soi 17 number 12'. The kitchen's screen shows a line with address and what was asked, and an auto-call back says when the boat should arrive. No smartphone needed.
Build with Twilio Voice, Whisper Thai, Claude extraction, Google Sheets, Thai TTS
Web portal
Dry Kitchen Match: neighbors with a dry stove cook for upstairs elders on the same soi
A household with a dry floor and a working gas stove signs up on a paper sheet or QR, saying how many portions they can cook. The page matches them with elders within two houses and prints a simple meal list. Hot meals reach people the boats cannot yet reach.
Build with Next.js, Supabase, distance matching, QR sign-up sheet
What people reported
The Nation, 3 Oct 2026: elders lowering baskets, boats to Rom Klao, ready-to-eat food needed
nationthailand.com