Sapphire Alert

• 

  Dubhacks

SapphireAlert provides security and assurance for those who live with epilepsy. Our app allows the user to go on about their daily lives without constantly worrying about hurting themselves and others. Epilepsy is unpredictable, so we focus on getting the user the help they need immediately after they experience a seizure. After a seizure, most people experience memory loss for 1-2 hours, so remembering where they are, where they are going, and sometimes even who they are is essential to calming their anxiety. By using the Pebble Time smartwatch and an accompanying mobile application, we are able to identify where the user is when a seizure occurs, and provide resources for them to reacquaint themselves with their surroundings. After 2 minutes of our initial timer ending, automated audio messages play every 5 minutes to help the user slowly acclimate to their environment. This message will be created analyzing their current location, as well as integration with Google Calendar, to let them know where they are as well as where they may have been going. One such potential user would be Kyle’s sister Sarah, who had her first seizure in 2012. This would be the first of a few dozen Grand Mal and Absent seizures occurring in the past 5 years that she would ensure. Watching his sister convulsing, unconscious was one of the hardest sights to see as an older brother, and the recovery after the seizure is long and nonlinear. For at least an hour, Sarah comes in and out of consciousness, asking the same 5-7 questions about what happened, where she is, and who she’s with.
Our goal is to empower Kyle’s sister, and the additional 3.4 million Americans who are affected by seizures and epilepsy, to reclaim their lives, and to feel empowered to do the things they enjoy.
On our journey in developing this app, we hit many roadblocks. Two of our group members studied JavaScript for three months prior to Dubhacks, intending to utilize the skills somehow, but Pebble’s JavaScript compatibility failed us, forcing us to learn C on the fly. Our final Pebble product is simple in structure, but feels like an incredible accomplishment having only 7 hours to learn the language and become proficient enough to navigate complex functions. Meanwhile, our roadblocks in relation to C stunted the growth of our Android app. With no knowledge of how to connect the two features, we developed the Android app and the Pebble app independently, making some generous assumptions of how they could eventually work together. Independently, each of us learned at least two new languages or frameworks to make the best of our sticky situation. The future of Sapphire Alert currently looks gray. Ultimately, none of us have the complete skills needed to make this app a reality, but with open-sourced code located in a Github repo, we are hopeful that someone somewhere finds our humble beginnings and fully develops our idea. We are thankful for the opportunity to come together and quickly prototype our idea, and even more thankful for the resources provided to us to aid in approaching our lofty goals.

Built With

• c
• java