Help Me - Emergency Web App

Help Me - Emergency Web App Home Screen

Inspiration

Every day, countless women, children, and elderly people face emergencies where they cannot reach their phones to call for help. We wanted to build a solution that works without any button presses—just a simple voice command.

What it does

Help Me is a lightweight web application that listens for a user's custom trigger phrase (e.g., "purple lantern now" or "1234"). If the phrase is heard 3 times, it automatically:

Fetches the user's live GPS location.
Simulates sending an alert to their trusted contacts and nearby police stations.
Displays a clear red alert screen with an "I AM SAFE" button to cancel false alarms. How we built it

We used HTML, CSS, and Vanilla JavaScript. The core features rely on the Web Speech API for voice recognition and the geolocation API for live location tracking. Data is stored locally using the browser's localstorage.

Challenges we ran into

One major challenge was the browser's security restrictions, which prevent continuous background listening when the app is closed. We simulated this "Always-On" mode with a UI toggle to demonstrate how it would work in a native mobile app.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We successfully built a fully functional prototype within the hackathon time limit. The app allows users to set their own custom trigger phrase, making it adaptable for different people and situations.

What we learned

We learned how to integrate the Web Speech API with real-time DOM updates and how to handle asynchronous location fetching. We also learned the importance of user privacy and clear UI design in emergency situations.

What's next for Help Me

In the future, we plan to convert this into a native Android/iOS app for true background protection and integrate a real SMS gateway (like Twilio) to send actual alerts to contacts and police.