My brother in law is visiting from Alaska.

His first night here he misjudged the final step on the staircase, fell, and broke his hip. A week, a hip replacement, and $20,000 USD later, he is out of the hospital and in a nursing care facility about three miles away. In a few more days, he will be back here at my house.

His apartment is two floors beneath mine and they are serious floors: 14 inches of concrete heavily reinforced with steel. A cordless telephone or wi-fi signal will not penetrate one of them, much less two.

I need ideas for a simple, low-tech signaling system. It could be as basic as a string he could pull connected to a bell on the upper floor, except that the layout of the building makes any direct physical connection quite difficult, and there is little in the way of bits and pieces available in this little town where I live.

He has cerebral palsy, and operating a cell phone is beyond his capabilities. I have a relay system set up to feed wifi to the apartment directly below mine, but two floors down from me there is no usable signal.

I'm hoping there is some outside-the-box idea that I'll say, "Why didn't I think of that?" when I hear it.

tanstaafl.