Haven is a facial recognition system that identifies homeowners entering their house and in turn, triggers smart home commands customized to the user. The project was built by Ali Toyserkani, Queeni Wu, Patrick Liu, and Vivien Ding for QHacks 2018.

Haven is not just an app or a function. It is a platform. Haven utilizes face recognition to detect, at the front door, faces that belong in the household. It enables IoT home devices to adjust features in the house such as unlocking the door, adjusting lighting, heat, and anything else the user might want to create the most welcoming experience. It leaves behind the days of coming home to a lonely, stark house after a long tiring day.

Haven was built using Python and Flask for the face recognition and API respectively. It is hosted using Amazon AWS and utilises libraries including OpenCV for image processing and OpenFace for face recognition.

In order to truly give each individual their own home welcoming, we hope that there will be growth in potential functions that Haven can execute. Though we are providing the technology, security, and platform. Our vision is for the functions to be written by our users, for our users, just like skill on the Amazon Alexa, or apps for iOS to wholey capture customization of the smart home.