Simba's Surveillance

Inspiration

Our motivation was derived from a documentary highlighting the efforts of individuals dedicated to wildlife protection, who employed cameras to capture the actions of poachers. At that time, the cameras presented a significant challenge, as they recorded all forms of movement rather than specifically targeting human activity. This is where our initiative became relevant.

What it does

Our program uses AI to watch live streams from cameras and returns with timestamps of people in them.

How we built it

The cameras will execute the detection program developed in Python. Subsequently, the captured images will be uploaded to a backend server, along with the corresponding timestamps indicating when the screenshots were taken. The backend will then convert this information into JSON packages. The frontend, utilizing Flask, will retrieve these packages and display them on our interface, which is hosted on Vercel.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into many challenges. The first challenge was figuring out the idea in the first place. After talking with some of the wonderful mentors, they pointed out that our original idea was not helpful for humanity. Unfortunately, our problems did not end there. There was undoubtedly a lot of work to be done however there was not much work that could have been done simultaneously, resulting in many people sitting around not having work. One of the technical problems we ran into was getting the front and back end connected. We also had trouble with getting the AI model to only detect humans, formatting JSON files, getting our branches not to have merge conflicts and so many more.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Having a product was a big goal of ours. We are especially proud of how we were able to implement technologies that we did not have experience with before like server hosting or JSON parsing. We all had our struggles and we are proud of the way we helped each other solve our problems.

What we learned

We learned many new technologies for sure but there were many other things that we learned that we think were very valuable. We learned what it took to work in a team, not only in the form of communication but having our work not conflict with other people's stuff. We learned what it means to make an ethical and humanitarian product.

What's next for Simba's Surveillance

We are excited about the possibilities that this technology has and how it can be mass-produced. We want to be able to invest in better tech and then sell it to foundations and governments to help them fight poachers and save endangered species.

Built With

• css
• flask
• javascript
• json
• python
• verecel
• yolov8