Inspiration
Honestly, I just wanted to make something that would actually help someone if they ever felt unsafe—including me. The theme was safety, and I wanted something real: one button you press when you’re panicking and your computer basically screams for help. That’s where SafetyFirst came from.
What it does
With one press, SafetyFirst grabs your live location, sends it to a trusted contact, and blasts a fullscreen red-and-blue strobe so people around you notice immediately (or so someone sketchy backs off). It’s built to activate instantly—no menus, no thinking, just go.
How we built it
I coded everything in C++. I used cURL to send the alert, ip-api.com to get your location, JSON to format it, and the Windows API to make the strobe window. The whole process is: get location → send the alert → flash the lights. Super fast, super simple.
Challenges we ran into
The strobe literally broke my screen the first time. Like full red—couldn’t see anything, had to hard reboot my laptop. I also had to fight with cURL being picky about requests and the API not always giving back the same fields. Getting all the parts to actually work in the right order definitely tested my patience.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
It works. It’s fast. And it doesn’t break my computer anymore.
What we learned
I learned a ton about the Windows API, sending webhooks from C++, and handling external APIs without everything crashing. But the biggest thing I learned is how important it is to build safety tools that are dead simple and impossible to hesitate on.
What's next for SafetyFirst
I want to add SMS alerts, multiple contacts, and maybe an optional siren.
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