Access Echo

Inspiration

Door activity can be easy to miss when a household cannot rely on an audible chime. Access Echo explores a small, transparent visual cue: a high-contrast timeline that distinguishes ordinary motion from an urgent button press.

What it does

The local engine accepts four event kinds: motion_detected, button_press, device_online, and device_offline. It records device health, queues ordinary motion in quiet mode, keeps button presses urgent, allows acknowledgement, and emits an explicit escalation when a tick advances 30 seconds or more. The demo makes every transition visible and keeps raw JSON available for inspection.

How we built it

We preserved the supplied pure-Python Engine and its deterministic command/event contract, then ported that contract to a dependency-free browser Engine class. The static page uses a fixed synthetic clock, inline CSS/JS, and no fetch calls, packages, fonts, or external assets, so it works from file:// as well as a static HTTP subpath.

Challenges

The key challenge was keeping the browser presentation friendly without changing subtle state rules: quiet mode only changes non-urgent alert presentation, escalation uses 30-second buckets, and snapshot reads must not mutate the engine clock.

What we learned

A small state machine is easier to trust when the timeline shows both the triggering event and the resulting action. Keeping the original Python implementation intact also makes parity checks concrete rather than aspirational.

Accomplishments

The package includes a self-contained static experience, a preserved standard-library local MVP, a structured parity corpus, and a deliberately honest verification record.

Next steps

A future product study could test visual hierarchy with deaf and hard-of-hearing users, add configurable visual patterns, and define an authorized Ring integration only after its API and safety boundaries are verified.

Verification limits

This is a synthetic, offline MVP. Local unit, parity, HTTP, and browser checks cover the included behavior, but they are not official Ring validation, clinical accessibility certification, production security review, or evidence of real device integration. No device, account, outbound action, or emergency workflow was tested.

Built With

• css
• html
• javascript
• python
• sqlite
• unittest
• urllib