Inspiration - Clenching keys in between your fingers, double checking the back seat in a dark parking lot, turning on all the lights as soon as you get home so it doesn't seem like you're home alone - We've all been there. Fear of unprovoked violence is an unfortunate reality that all of us have to deal with, and it's a shame that in today's day in age we aren't using our most valuable asset to its fullest potential; technology. Making emergency phone calls in times of duress have proven to be unreliable, risky, and slow. People need something that works quickly without hassle. This was the inspiration behind HomeSafe.
How it works - HomeSafe uses a safety system that requires the user to place their fingertip on the screen of their smartphone during unsafe everyday situations. These situations can include the walk home after a late class or venturing out to your car in a dimly lit parking lot. If the user's fingertip leaves the screen for longer than fifteen seconds, indicating an emergency of some sort, the authorities are notified with text-to-voice speech using previously entered data (name, age, weight, ethnicity) as well as the user's location.
Challenges we ran into - We didn't know how we were going to implement the text-to-speech feature, but after checking Mashape we found the Twilio API had everything that we needed and more. We had in depth discussions as to how we felt we could solve the complex problem. After passing around many solutions and ideas, we're confident that we've found the best solution which will help not only to alleviate the fears faced by thousands everyday, but potentially save lives.
Accomplishments that we're proud of - None of us had ever used Xcode or developed on iOS before, so we were really happy to have a finished product at the end of the hackathon! We felt that this project was challenging enough to push our limits and we still had fun with it.
What we learned - The project has really helped us expand into another realm of mobile development both technically and ethically. The social issues raised by our project opened our eyes to the realities of senseless assault and the problem it poses. We're here to try and solve that!
What's next for HomeSafe - In the future we really want to add an option where the user can choose what phone number is contacted if their finger loses contact with the screen. This could eliminate situations where the police may not be needed but are contacted anyway. Other options for the future include allowing geo-fences so that once the user leaves a specified area, the service is active and on high alert.
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