Safety Watch

A set of eyes for places you cannot see

Comment

Inspiration

Did you know that around 25,000 students suffer from homicidal injuries every year while walking to school? On top of that, with the current state of our society, social distancing will dramatically reduce the likelihood of a student successfully seeking help from unforeseen danger. Our goal is to promote safety by giving users the ability to view any possible dangers behind them they may not be aware of.

What it does

Composed of multiple parts, this project's main use is to allow the user to see what or who is behind them. A Raspberry Pi, power bank and webcam package is attached to the user's backpack and then connected to a mobile app that displays a live video feed of the Pi's camera. This allows the user to have a good view of what is behind them without making any obvious movements that could risk their safety.

How we built it

We began by prototyping the idea and layout of the app on Figma. Once, we had a plan, we used Android Studio to build the actual app and used a Raspberry Pi to send a video signal over the internet, one that the app could receive and display.

Challenges we ran into

The main challenge we encountered was the time constraint. We had planned on adding other features like automatic emergency calling, incorporating the Google Maps API, the ability to turn on and off the camera, as well as weapon detection, but there wasn't enough time to implement these features while still being able to complete its main functions.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are definitely proud that we were able to work collaboratively and successfully, despite the current state of our world. It was even the first hackathon for some of us! The fact that we were able to brainstorm many ideas, learn and use completely new software, as well as create something useful that could be expanded on makes us proud of where we've come in these short 36 hours.

What we learned

On top of the dozens of new software and skills we've picked up from Gear Up, we've also learned important skills that could benefit our day to day lives such as collaboration, time management, communication, and persistence, just to name a few.

What's next for Safety Surveillance and Weapon Detection

Although this is a one-time project, not only can see the different areas of improvement that this project could benefit from, but we also realize this technology can be fined tuned and improved upon to be used in the real world, possibly saving lives and making the world a safer place.

Share this project:

Updates