Accidental falls are among one of the main causes of death and disability on elderly people. This stands both as a healthcare problem, in the sense that, upon falling, if individuals are not assisted in an early stage severe long term consequences may arise; and as a limitation for the individual’s daily life, in the sense that they generally deprive themselves of regular routines as a preventive measure to avoid falling. In this paper we describe a hardware unit conceived to automatically detect fall events, and trigger a set of alert actions which allow the remote detection of the occurrence and facilitate rapid assistance.