HomeChecks

Logo!
You can see your earnings so far at the bottom, time you've spent today at home, and the time until the next HomeCheck (every 15m)
If you leave your house, you'll be in the "Away" state where you won't be earning!
Donations are easy! Just tap the button and send money via PayPal.
We don't HomeCheck during sleeping hours. This is to make sure people actively choosing to take part in social distancing are rewarded most.
Just a simple sign up page! You authenticate with Venmo afterwards to receive payments.
If you feel someone else could use the money more than you need it, you can pass it on. It goes back into the pool for someone else to earn.
You can withdraw your earnings any time. They get sent directly to Venmo automatically.

Inspiration

There are two major societal problems we hear about during the COVID-19 crisis:

People aren't taking it seriously and are spreading the disease
People who were already financially at-risk are even more at risk

COVID-19 impact goes way down when people stay at home and don't spread the disease We know that we can reduce the impact of COVID-19 if we take protective measures and socially distance.

I wanted to solve both of these problems in a single app: What if we could incentivize people to stay home by paying them, hourly? This would reward people for social distancing and help bridge the gap in finances per day.

What it does

The app simply checks to see if you're at home using your location & Wi-Fi and then tallies all of the time you spend there. Every day, there's a central pool of money that is split between everyone who takes part.

The pool is completely donation based and offers two ways to add funds:

You can donate directly via PayPal.
You can use the app yourself and instead of taking payouts, pass the funds you've earned back into the pool!

1 is a great option for the very fortunate who want to be a part of helping their neighbor and giving money directly to the cause. 2 is for those who want to show that they're taking social distancing seriously, but don't want to take funds away from people that really need it.

Social Distancing creates ripple effects that reach beyond just one's immediate interactions This is the effect that HomeChecks is trying to create. Pushing people to reduce the number of other people they interact with in close distance.

How I built it

I'm usually an iOS native developer, but upon realizing that my audience for this app was going to be primarily people who are financially at-risk, focusing on the iOS market felt shortsighted. I'd never used React Native and my Javascript is shoddy at best, but I taught myself RN this weekend while building the whole thing out! There's a simple Postgres database on the backend keeping the whole thing together.

Challenges I ran into

If learning RN wasn't enough, notifications in the background + state management can be a real bear! The app needed to feel seamless. Building a system that would notify in the background and then tell the server your current home status was tough, but it seems to work!

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'm so proud to have learned a language and building a functional app that looks good enough for the app store! I also feel like this app is so well aligned with the current issues at hand. It gets money to those who needs it and incentivizes people to make healthy choices by staying home.

Even a few dollars can make the difference between having food on the table or not. It can mean paying a bill to keep the lights on and having money to meet rent.

What's next for HomeChecks

I'm going to launch it! I have a few groups willing to put some (small) amounts of money in the initial pools and I can't wait for people to have access to it!