OmniGuide

Your Silent Partner
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Inspiration

How can we solve a daily challenge for millions of people? In the world, there are 285 million visually impaired individuals. Their most common fears are going out on their own, getting lost and an overall sense of vulnerability. The white cane, the guide dog and voice-controlled apps provide a great help, but have limitations.

This is why we created OmniGuide

What it does

Allows blind people to bypass obstacles through a collaborative network built with their own obstacle reports and enhanced with a layer of open data such as public works or dangerous crossings. The vibration-based cues allow users to hear traffic sounds and have social interactions.

How we built it

We took a bottom, mid & top approach: • We reverse engineered the bluetooth protocols of the xiaomi mi band. • Created obstacles with Sentilo API and we combined them into Google Maps. • Stiched everything together with Android with a try & fix approach.

Challenges we ran into

It wasn’t an easy battle: • The two wristbands overwrote each other’s data when put together. • We weren’t gentle and the API’s misbehaved. Big shotout to OpenTrends for helping us out. • Android testing & stitching was a major issue. Lots and lots of attempts

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’ve built something that can improve the day-to-day experience, sense of security, and autonomy for individuals with severe visual impairment.

What we learned

• That one can only go so many hours without sleeping. • Teamwork beats bugs 100% of the time. • We may or may not ever do another project in Android again.