Free · open source · private by design

Technology for quality of life, recovery, and care.

Nimrod is a free system built to improve daily life and support recovery for people with TBI, stroke, and other serious conditions — and to help their families communicate, advocate, and stay close. Private, modular, and able to run 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, no install, nothing to uninstall afterwards. It runs the same code a bedside screen runs — the only difference is that these are sample photos and the settings live in this browser instead of 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, it is the whole point — and the picture never leaves the device.

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.

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 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, fullscreen surface that hosts everything as arrangeable modules.

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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.

Every module, today

A screen is built from modules. This list is drawn from the same catalog the composer offers you, in the browser, as you read it — so it cannot say something the product does not.

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Every module named above is in the public open-source repository. Nothing here is a mockup. This list is not written by hand — it is rendered from modules_catalog.js, the file the composer reads, so a module cannot appear here without existing or disappear from the product while still being advertised here. It used to be hand-written, and it spent weeks advertising a default module that had been removed.

What they use is built for one button — the setup behind it is not

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

Most software assumes a mouse. If someone can only press one switch — with a hand, a cheek, a shoulder, and sometimes taking seconds to do it — that assumption is the whole barrier. So the control layer came first, and everything else is built on it.

It fits the person

  • Bind anything to anything. A switch, an adaptive button, a controller, a dial, a keyboard — pointed at what you want it to do.
  • Tuned to a body. How long a press must be held, how long before it repeats, and what to ignore as a tremor or a bounce.
  • One switch reaches the whole bedside screen — step between panels, then act. Setting it up in the first place takes a keyboard and a mouse.

It follows the person

  • The setup belongs to them, not to a machine. Tune it once; it works on any screen they sit at.
  • Someone else can help from another screen — a clinician or a relative, with the same controls, and the screen always says when it is happening.
  • Switch off who may act while you fix something, then switch 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, too high a hold, or a panel with nothing to say are four different repairs that look identical. Each gets its own sentence.
  • Is it even plugged in? — asked first, so nobody troubleshoots 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 media, served from your machine — and it keeps working through a dropped connection
  • Accounts & profiles — sign in and every person gets their own screen
  • Device-independent setups — your layout lives in your account, not on a 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 her 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 feeds flow directly between your own devices. The site relays a tiny “let’s connect” handshake 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 live in a folder you own. The system points to them; it never hosts them or locks them away.

Here is everything the server actually holds

Not a promise — a live list. The table below is generated from the running database, so it cannot quietly go out of date as the project grows. If I add somewhere to put something and forget to explain it, it appears here labeled as undescribed rather than going unmentioned.

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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, so you can read exactly what is stored 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 — the little computer built into a keyboard, about the price of a night out. It also runs on any laptop or desktop you already have, and the screen can be a monitor or a television.

There is no single minimum spec, and I am not going to invent one. What it needs depends entirely on which modules you run: photos and a clock ask almost nothing, while video calls and camera tracking ask a good deal more. Start with what you have. If it is too slow you will know within a minute, and nothing has been spent.

How long a first setup takes, and where people get stuck, are questions I cannot answer honestly yet — nobody has done one end to end and timed it. When somebody has, the real numbers go here.

For care facilities and clinicians

It is free. There is nothing to procure.

No license, no contract, no purchase order, no vendor to onboard. If a resident’s family wants this, the whole answer is: send them the link. It runs on a machine somebody already owns, and nothing about it touches facility systems or facility networks beyond ordinary internet access.

If you work with people who might benefit and want to talk it through — or you have 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 commercial adaptive switch runs roughly $75 wired or $145 wireless. An arcade button, a microcontroller and a printed enclosure come to about $15 — and a microcontroller flashed as a USB keyboard or gamepad needs no driver in any browser. Plug it in and bind it to anything on the screen.

Nimrod does not sell hardware and has none to sell. This is software support for what you or a maker near you can build: the input layer takes switches, buttons, dials and controllers as ordinary devices, and what each one does is set per person rather than per 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.

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