eCall - Emergency Call Service

Main page
Call confirmation page
Mock calling page
Live translation page (under the hood/future steps)
AWS Bedrock (under the hood)

Inspiration

Two of our teammates are international students, born and raised in Indonesia for 18 years. However, when asked for Indonesia's local emergency number, they didn't even know. How can we expect tourists to know the emergency number of the country they're travelling to, when the locals themselves don't even know.

As frequent travellers, we want to make sure everyone can feel safe and secure while travelling, without going through the hassles of finding out the various contact emergency services... too little too late.

What it does

When faced with an emergency in an unfamiliar place, users can open the eCall app and press the 'SOS' button. Using T-Mobile's device location technology, eCall locates the user using their device, then automatically calls the region's emergency service number.

Additionally, eCall is also able to provide real-time translation in the local language of the location determined from the user's device.

How We Built It

Front-end: NextJS tailwindCSS For location services: T-Mobile Nokia Network As Code Google Cloud Console - Geocoding API & Cloud Translation API Huggingface For calling: Twilio Backend + Hosting Python FastAPI SQL Flask AWS Bedrock Vercel Heroku

Challenges We Ran Into

Throughout the busy 24 hours, challenges were frequent and frustrating, almost making us give up at times and making us take many cookie breaks. Each of our team member had a unique role, so we each faced different challenges including: hosting on Heroku, prompt engineering AWS Bedrock to produce a concise and detailed report, integrating real-time two way translation, and querying API responses from Google to return the correct municipality. Most of these arose from new technologies, but we persevered, used mentors, other hackers, and documentation to be able to solve all our problems.

Accomplishments that We're Proud Of

We're most proud of the practicality of the idea, the functionality, and the completeness of our MVP which at times seemed like it wasn't going to be completed. We're also proud of the future steps we have in mind for eCall, which many of us explored individually but weren't able to link together in time for the demo.

What We Learned

Throughout the development of eCall, we gained valuable insights into both the technical and non-technical aspects of building a robust application. On the technical side, we deepened our understanding of integrating multiple APIs, such as T-Mobile’s device tracking and Google’s Geocoding and Translation services, into one seamless flow. We also learned how to manage backend services across platforms like Heroku and Vercel, and the importance of efficient prompt engineering for services like AWS Bedrock.

Beyond coding, we learned the importance of teamwork, time management, and using documentation effectively. It became clear that new tools can be challenging but, with the right mindset, mentors, and collaboration, we could overcome these obstacles and push our project to completion. The experience also reinforced the importance of focusing on user experience—ensuring the app not only works but is intuitive and accessible in emergency situations.

What's next for eCall - Emergency Call Service

Our vision for eCall extends far beyond the current MVP. In the future, we plan to:

Live transcript and translating of language based on location (already semi-working!!)
Offline Functionality: Enable eCall to work in low-connectivity or offline scenarios by storing key emergency contacts locally on the device.
Automated Emergency Messaging: Implement features that send automatic texts to emergency contacts and nearby users when the SOS button is pressed.
Additional Language Support: Expand translation capabilities with language models like GPT and Hugging Face to better serve multilingual users.
Municipal-Specific Emergency Info: Provide users with relevant safety tips, weather alerts, or local emergency shelters based on their current municipality.

We’re excited about the future of eCall and believe that, with more development, it could become an indispensable tool for travelers worldwide, ensuring peace of mind and safety in any corner of the globe.