HackUPC 2026, Barcelona · Selected from 1,800+ applicants · Apr 2026 to Present
SafeHaven
A stealth personal-safety iOS app: a codeword silently streams live audio, video, and GPS to a trusted contact over a P2P relay, with on-device ML danger detection.
- Swift
- React Native
- WebRTC
- Hypercore P2P
- CoreML
- Node.js
Context
Built at HackUPC 2026 in Barcelona: a personal safety app for at-risk users. The core idea is stealth: when someone is in danger, opening an obvious emergency app can escalate the situation. SafeHaven activates on a codeword instead.
What we built
- A codeword trigger that silently streams live audio, video, and GPS to a trusted contact's dashboard, over a Hypercore + WebRTC peer-to-peer relay, with no central server holding the stream.
- On-device ML for automatic danger detection (sound classification), with real-time media annotation on the receiver's dashboard.
My role
I owned the on-device sound classifier, the codeword recogniser, and the UI wireframes and onboarding flow.
Where it's going
Since the hackathon, SafeHaven has been migrated to a native Swift app and is heading for the App Store.
The linked repository is the original HackUPC build (React Native + Node.js), the one written during the hackathon. The Swift rewrite is in a private repository and isn't public yet.
It isn't shipped yet, and that's deliberate. We're still debating the product as much as the code: its credibility, the liability questions, and which use cases genuinely help someone in danger rather than just sounding good. Worth getting right before it reaches anyone.