How MessageHome actually works.
The homepage gives you the pitch. This page gives you the detail — every feature that's actually built, how each channel connects, and exactly what happens when a reminder goes unconfirmed. Nothing here is account-specific; your own family or team page walks you through your own setup step by step.
Your family admin page
Everything below happens here — never on the board itself, which stays a single simple screen for whoever's actually reading it. No password to remember, we send a private link to whoever's set up as the organiser each time you need access.
Connecting each channel
Every channel is opt-in and one-time: whoever wants to reach the board connects once, from their own phone, using the app they already have.
- WhatsApp. Add their name and number from your family page — you'll get a link to send them (text, WhatsApp, email, whatever's easiest). They tap it and press Send once, from their own phone; after that, WhatsApp messages from that number reach the board automatically.
- Telegram. Get a pairing link from your family page — scan the QR code together, or send them the link if they're elsewhere. They tap it, press Start, and they're connected. A short code works too, as a last resort.
- Text (SMS). Add their name and number from your family page — they then save the MessageHome board's own SMS number (shown there too) and text it once, like any other contact. After that, texts from their number arrive automatically.
- Email. Every board has its own private email address. Anyone can be told it and start emailing straight away — no pairing step at all.
Nobody reaches a board by accident. A sender only ever lands on a board once someone with access to your family page has explicitly connected them — an unrecognised number or account is simply dropped, not routed anywhere.
The MessageHome app
Every channel above needs a one-time connect. The MessageHome app skips that step entirely: open the private link from your family page, add it to your home screen, and you're sending straight to the board from a screen built for exactly that — tap a category instead of typing one, pick a time from a real calendar instead of a text tag, and send a voice note or photo in two taps.
[[ dd/mm/yy hh:mm ]] — the same scheduling feature every other channel has, just
without the syntax.
Voice messages
Record a short message instead of typing one — it shows up on the board as its own message, and opening it reveals a big play button and a waveform instead of words to read. Nothing to install and nothing for the recipient to type back: just tap, listen, done. Especially useful for anyone who finds reading effortful, or where a familiar voice simply lands better than text on a screen.
Record it from your family page, or just send an ordinary WhatsApp or Telegram voice note the same way you'd send one to anyone else — either way, it turns up on the board exactly the same.
Scheduling a message for later
Any message, from any app, can be sent and scheduled to appear on their MessageHome board at a chosen moment instead of straight away — just add a date and time wrapped in double square brackets anywhere in the text. You'll also get a one-line reply confirming it's been scheduled.
Whoever manages your family admin page sees a "Scheduled messages" list showing everything still waiting to post, with its exact time — one tap cancels one that's no longer needed.
Scheduled messages
To send a message later, open the MessageHome app, tick "Schedule for later" and pick a day and time. It waits here and posts to the board automatically at that time. Cancel one below if it's no longer needed.
| Message | From | Posts at | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bins out | Emma (WhatsApp) | 01/01/26 09:00 | |
| Happy birthday Grandma! 🎂 | Tom (Telegram) | 12/08/26 08:00 | |
| Reminder: dentist tomorrow | Sarah (SMS) | 05/08/26 07:30 |
Reminders & escalation
A reminder ("Take your medication at 3pm") flips onto the board at its scheduled time — every day, specific days of the week, a particular day each month, or just once, whichever fits. If it's set to require confirmation, a large Mark done button appears alongside it. If nobody presses it within a chosen timeframe, MessageHome sends a message to an allocated relative to let them know they may want to check in with their loved one.
Reminders
| Title | Time | Repeats | Confirm? | Respond within | Alerts | On | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Take medication | 09:00 | Daily | Yes | 60 min | Andy (WhatsApp) | ||
| Lunch | 12:30 | Daily | No | — | — | ||
| Carer visit | 14:00 | Thu | No | — | — | ||
| Dinner | 18:00 | Daily | No | — | — | ||
| Take medication | 19:00 | Daily | Yes | 60 min | Andy (WhatsApp) |
Alert contacts are family members either connected to this board on Telegram or added as a WhatsApp number — each option shows which.
This is a best-effort notification, not a monitored emergency response. If a monitored pendant alarm is already in place, MessageHome sits alongside it rather than replacing it.
Daily check-in
Once a day, at a time you choose, the board interrupts itself with a simple question — "How are you doing today?" — read aloud with a chime, and four large icons to answer with. Whichever they tap sends a reply straight back to you on Telegram or WhatsApp, so you know they're okay without them ever having to type a word.
No answer within a couple of hours, and a quiet reminder appears on the board plus a message to let you know it hasn't been answered yet — the same escalation idea as reminders above, just for a daily wellbeing check rather than a task.
The idle screen
When there's nothing new, the board doesn't sit blank or show yesterday's messages forever — after a few quiet minutes it switches to a calm idle view, and switches straight back the moment something new arrives. If anything's still sitting unread — or a reminder is still waiting to be confirmed — the idle screen isn't the end of it either: it flips back to show the board for ten minutes every half hour until it's been seen or marked done.
Alerts
Most messages arrive in calm amber. A message is only shown in red — with a little more visual weight — when it's actually meant to stand out.
Starting a message with # from any channel marks it as an alert — and, since it's
urgent, adds a one-tap 👍 to send a quick "seen" reply back.
Board health & battery alerts
The hardware itself is quietly monitored in the background, not just the messages passing through it. If a board goes quiet (lost wifi, a power cut, a crashed tablet) for about an hour, or its battery is running low and it isn't plugged in, an alert goes out straight away — by email and Telegram, to whoever's set as a contact for that board, plus MessageHome's own team as a backstop. A problem is never left to be noticed only by chance.
Telegram, when a board goes quiet:
"Hi Emma, Mum's message board has gone quiet — it hasn't checked in for about 1 hour. It might
just be unplugged, a lost wifi signal, or a power cut, but it could also mean the tablet's
crashed. Might be worth giving them a ring to check they're okay."
Telegram, once it reconnects:
"Hi Emma, Mum's message board has reconnected — all good again."
Email, low battery:
"Mum's message board is running low on battery (18%) and doesn't look like it's plugged in.
It'll switch off soon if it isn't charged — might be worth popping the charger back in for
them."
Messages are addressed by name wherever we know it, from whoever's messaged the board's Telegram bot before. Battery reporting depends on the tablet's own browser supporting it — most modern Android tablets do; where it isn't available, connectivity alerts still work exactly the same way.
Learning difficulties board
Set once per household from master admin, a board can switch from the default clock/weather layout to one built around a daily routine instead: clear, bright, icon-led categories, a now/next view instead of a full day at once, and carer photos. Nothing about connecting WhatsApp, Telegram, text or email changes underneath it — only how the idle screen and reminders present.
Optional: swipe to see the rest of the week
Off by default, since the idle screen deliberately shows only today to stay calm and simple. A household can turn on an extra "See the rest of the week" button underneath the Now/Next/After card: tapping it opens a full-screen, swipeable run of day-cards covering tomorrow through Sunday, built from the same weekly schedule. Set per household from the family or support dashboard.
Thursday
Friday
Carer visits are their own category: add a carer's name and a photo once in the family admin dashboard, assign it to that carer's recurring visit slot, and it appears on the board automatically at the beginning of the day. It then gets reused for every visit of theirs without uploading it again. Live messages also carry the same category icon their schedule item would, so a message about medication is recognisable before it's read.
CARER DUE AT 12:30
Jenny
Send messages yourself and add one of the seven icons by adding the category word in double square brackets anywhere in the text, from any channel. Whatever's typed inside the brackets is matched against a list of known words (see below), so there's no exact phrase to remember; anything unrecognised is simply left alone, tag and all, rather than guessed at.
Confirm-or-escalate works exactly as described above — a category item that needs confirming still gets a Mark done button, and still quietly alerts a chosen contact if it's missed.
Optional: symbols alongside the words
Turn on symbol mode from the family or support dashboard and incoming messages show a small Makaton/Widgit-style picture next to any word that has one, not just plain text — a message about medicine shows a medicine icon above the word "medicine," a walk shows a little walking figure, and so on. A word without a matching symbol just shows as text, same as always. Off by default, and always changeable later.
Reward styles for different needs
Learning Difficulties boards only. Different people respond to praise differently, so what happens when a routine is marked done is a style you choose per household, not one fixed behaviour for everyone. Each family member manages this from their own dashboard, and only one style can be active at once — turning one on turns any other off.
Down syndrome — a message from someone who knows them
Marking a routine done opens a pop-up with a short praise message, picked at random from whoever in the family has recorded one for them — so it's a genuine voice from someone they know, not a generic "well done".
Rewards
One message per person, kept up to date from their own family dashboard.
| Family member | Message |
|---|---|
| Emma | "Well done sweetheart, so proud of you!" |
| Grandad | "That's my girl — brilliant job!" |
A small flame-and-number badge also appears on the board's idle screen — consecutive days with at least one routine marked done, not a full history or leaderboard, just enough to notice a good run.
Autism spectrum — predictable, never a surprise
Unpredictability and forced enthusiasm can be actively unwelcome for this group, so "off" and "just a quiet tick" are first-class choices here, not afterthoughts. Whatever style is chosen always appears the same way, in the same place — a popup over whatever's on screen at the time, not something that has to be noticed on an idle screen that might not even be showing.
Each family builds their own small library of interest content — short facts or pictures tagged by topic (trains, dinosaurs, weather, whatever they're into) — from their own dashboard. Nothing is shared between households, since every resident's interests are different.
No motion or sound unless explicitly allowed. A separate toggle turns on the popup's entrance animation and chime — off by default, since the whole point of this style is nothing sudden.
ADHD — an immediate hit of feedback
The opposite instinct from Autism spectrum: an energetic pop-up appears right on the tap, picking a different message and a bit of motion (a bounce, a shake, a pop) from a family-editable pool each time — never the same one twice in a row. Streaks are celebrated at short, configurable intervals (3, 5, 7 and 14 days by default) instead of only one long-term goal, so progress feels like something well before day 30.
The same small streak badge as Down syndrome shows on the idle screen, and a bigger banner marks a milestone day — both configurable per household from the family dashboard.
General learning disability — a real, chosen prize
For the largest and most varied group on this list, research points less to any single style and more to a preference for concrete, real rewards over abstract points — so the family picks an actual prize (a trip to the park, a favourite activity) and how many routines fill the jar towards it, rather than the board inventing one.
Each icon lights up as a routine's marked done. When the jar's full, the board celebrates and — if a family contact's been chosen — they get a message too, so the real reward actually gets delivered, not just claimed by the app.
Fragile X syndrome — low-sensory by default
Socially motivated, but sensory- and eye-contact-averse — so this reuses the exact same personal message system as Down syndrome, just always shown calm: no entrance animation, no sound, and no streak badge, none of it a choice offered here since it's this group's core need rather than a preference.
Williams syndrome — social feedback, nothing else
Research on this profile found a warm face or message reliably outperformed points or coins in a way that didn't hold for comparison groups — so this style, again, reuses the shared family message system, shown warm and animated, but with any points or streak display suppressed entirely rather than just played down.
Dyslexia — effort, not correctness
A history of being corrected at school can make evaluative feedback land badly, so this style's praise is always about the act of checking in, never about getting something right.
Dyspraxia / DCD — the tap is the accessibility need
The doc this whole feature is built from is explicit: the difficulty here is motor and sequencing, not motivation. MessageHome's "Mark done" is already one large, forgiving tap, so there's nothing bespoke to build about the interaction — just this group's own simple, calm reward pop-up on top of it.
Dyscalculia — no digits, anywhere
Maths anxiety can attach to a number as small and unrelated as "day 14" — so this style never shows one. A row of stars fills on the idle screen instead of a count, and even the pop-up's own message text is kept numeral-free.
Dignity mode — for acquired brain injury and age-related decline
The most deliberately unembellished of all ten: no streak, no animation, no sound, a larger font for slower processing or fatigue, and one plain warm acknowledgement. Gamification itself is the risk for this group, not the specific style of it — so there's less to configure here than anywhere else on this page, on purpose.
Every reward style above is opt-in per household and set from the family dashboard, and only one is ever active at a time — turning one on turns off whichever was on before it.
Read, unread & clearing
A message can be marked read, which dims it rather than deleting it — always reversible, never a surprise disappearance. A "Clear read" action removes dimmed messages in one confirmed action; boards can be set to tidy themselves automatically overnight.
Mute & quiet hours
A board can be muted instantly from your family page — useful for a bad night or a house full of visitors — and it shows a visible "muted" badge on the board itself, so it's obvious it's a deliberate choice, not a fault. A daily quiet-hours window (say, 10pm–7am) can also be set once and left running, so overnight messages arrive without the sound.
Accessibility
Large type throughout, set in Atkinson Hyperlegible — a typeface designed for readers with low vision — with contrast levels that stay readable across a room. Nothing relies on colour alone to convey meaning, flap animations respect a device's reduced-motion setting, and sound is always optional.
Data & privacy
Messages go to their board and nowhere else: no advertising, no data-selling, no analysis beyond what's needed to show them and, for reminders, to know whether they were confirmed. Only people explicitly connected can reach a board. Full detail is in the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
Visit check-in
For a household expecting regular carer or professional visits, any calendar event whose title matches a chosen word (say, "visit") gets an arrival and departure prompt right on the board — tapped by the visitor themselves, the same way a reminder gets marked done. It turns "a carer was supposed to come" into a confirmed record that they actually did.
If arrival or departure isn't confirmed within the chosen window, it escalates through the same confirm-or-escalate chain as any other reminder (see above) — no separate setup beyond a keyword and, if wanted, who to alert.
Running many boards at once
A coordinator or warden gets one shared portal link, scoped to just their own boards — nothing else on the platform is visible to them.
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