Pebble Hero

Inspiration

We were inspired by the campaign of #HackHarassment. We wanted to create something that made it easier for anyone to reach out for help or report a situation where they or someone else was in danger, or was being harassed in any way. At first, we wanted to make a web extension, in the form of an animated character that would be on the side of chatrooms to monitor conversations and offer support. However, that's when we came across the Pebble watch at the hardware booth, which none of us has heard of before. We thought it would be a great opportunity to try something we've never done before, so we combined our idea of a harassment reporter/support with the Pebble watch.

What it does

In risky situations, it is hard to know what to do if you are the subject of harassment or any wrongful action, and it is common for bystanders to fear stepping in. Pebble Hero takes the fear of stepping into conflict by giving users a way to subtlely report issues in front of them.

Pebble Hero is a Pebble watch app with two different views: one for the person in need, and one for the "hero."

On the "person in need" view, there are three options for different levels of emergency. A Level 1 emergency allows the person to contact the police directly. A Level 2 emergency allows for the person to contact a counselor nearby for emergencies less related to physical safety, and more related to emotional safety. Therefore, things like cyberbullying and face-to-face bullying can also be handled by this report system, with a real person to help. A Level 3 emergency allows for the person to contact a designated "Buddy", who is a peer, friend, or family member that also has the app and is able to be contacted for more personal emergencies, like forgetting an important assignment in your dorm.

On the Hero's view, there are three menus in sequence. The first one will appear when an alert is sent from the person in need's Pebble watch. Then, there is a menu that shows the Name and Location of the person in need. When the Hero clicks "select" again, it will notify the person-in-need that the Hero is on their way, or has seen their request.

How we built it

We started taking turns researching ways to organize menus on Pebble. As we researched, we also tested different methods to see which on we could make work until we found one, and stuck with it. We used CloudPebble to develop our app, and wrote our app in Javascript. We paired a Pebble watch with a phone, and compiled and tested our app as we worked to see how it would appear on the watchface.

Challenges we ran into

There were many challenges because only half of us were familiar with JavaScript prior to the event. It was a big challenge to make the code run, and to figure out how CloudPebble worked and connected with our phones and the watch. We struggled with getting multiple menu items onto one screen on the watchface, but found a way to save each menu item in its own variable, and manipulate when those variables would be shown.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of the fact that we MADE SOMETHING!!!!! We came into this hackathon with no ideas, but we all came together and ended up creating something that could be beneficial to society and could really be a useful tool.

What we learned

Pebble Hero is the first time any of us have created an app, so we learned a lot about app development. We also learned about working with an external device, and programming an app in a non-web environment.

What's next for Pebble Hero

The next steps to make Pebble Hero even more awesome are to: add icons to the user interface and improve the app so that we could publish it on the Pebble App Store for public use!