FireWatch

Inspiration

So, on the first day of the hackathon, I decided to straighten my hair to look sharp. While I was on the phone with my team member Zaina on my way to the event, I suddenly panicked realizing that I couldn't remember if I had turned off my hair straightener before leaving home. Luckily, my brother was still at home and was able to switch it off for me.

While discussing our potential ideas, Zaina recalled my hair straightener incident and brought up the question, "Yo imagine you weren't able to turn off your hair straightener? Your house could have burned down". At first, we laughed about it but then we realized hold on, that could actually be a very common cause of fires! Ever wonder how many residential fires are caused because of small things like forgetting to turn off your hair straightener? After conducting some quick research we found out that every year, there’s an average of 358,300 home-based fires In North America alone, and 49% of them are caused by cooking accidents! Clearly, this is a serious issue that needs to be addressed and we were quickly inspired to find a real and applicable solution. We began asking ourselves questions to come up with ideas. We asked, well how could we prevent people from realizing too late? What features would we need to implement? Could we make it accessibility friendly? Could it help people with old age and a likeliness to forget more often? Which brought us to our beautiful idea, what if we created an app that would remind the user to turn off their appliance as well as implement an emergency feature in case they are unable to check the alerts due to disregard or accessibility issues? And that's how FireWatch was created :)

What it does

FireWatch is a mobile app that provides users with real-time notifications if they have left an appliance or light on for an extended period of time. 1) Users can set a timer when they turn on an appliance or light, and the app will alert them when the timer is up. 2) If the user does not turn off the appliance or light, the app will continue to remind them until it is turned off. 3) If the reminder is not turned off after 3 alerts, an emergency SMS will be automatically sent to the emergency contact to ensure the safety of the user.

How we built it

We built our prototype using Figma, and Autocode to send alerts to the user or emergency contact.

Challenges we ran into

With the limited amount of time, we were unable to connect our front end with any backend features, but we were able to create a prototype that displays how our idea would look hypothetically. The main function we wanted to demonstrate but were unfortunately unable to do so due to lack of time was to connect an ai implementation that would send reminder notifications and emergency sms messages. We were able to create a bot using Autocode that sends the sms message to our phone, however, we just weren't able to connect the bot to any front-end examples to demonstrate its functionality. In theory, however, you can definitely be able to conclude that with enough time to code it up, auto code would be the main software used to implement ai into the app, bringing the app functionality to 100 percent!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are very proud of our user interface and experience. We are both very detail oriented and wanted to produce a prototype that was both aesthetic and functional. We didn't think we'd have been able to pull it off with the limited time, but are extremely happy and surprised at ourselves at what we came up with. We believe user interface and experience are very large and important factors when it comes to implementing a new app or idea. And so that's what we put the majority of our focus on to give you a real experience on FireWatch :)

What we learned

Before this hackathon, neither of us had any idea that something like Autocode even existed. It was an amazing software to understand and try to incorporate. As this was our first-ever hackathon, during our process we learned a lot about how to tackle a real-life issue in a manner that is realistic and applicable. We also learned how to create prototypes on Figma which was a great first-time learning experience for both of us! Overall, this hackathon has opened up opportunities to speak with people who gave us a lot of insight into technology and our careers, as well as taught us the beauty of ai and how much of an incredible and helpful service tool it can be. So grateful for the learning experience!

What's next for FireWatch

In the future, FireWatch could become a very applicable app. We would definitely add a feature to connect it to smart appliances so that those who have the option, can direct the app to turn off an appliance via Bluetooth instead of manually. Meaning we would connect appliances to the app and instead of sending an alert directing the user to turn an appliance off, the app would do it itself and notify the user that the appliance has been turned off. This would be extremely progressive as it would make the app more efficient, helpful and user accessible. Another feature we would love to add is to create a new product that would work as a smart outlet. Basically, it would be an outlet connected to the home outlet, and it would have a certain technology system that when an appliance is plugged into the outlet, you can connect that appliance to FireWatch. Of course this idea is very far into the future but it is very possible.

Built With

• autocode
• figma