Living in the Bay Area, we come from a privileged community, attending a highly ranked high school, surrounded by founders and FAANG employees everywhere we turn. Like many around the nation, our community has begrudgingly accepted campus safety anxiety as a normal part of the educational experience. As tech enthusiasts and fellow developers our team began to brainstorm ideas that could mitigate these concerns.

We personally felt that our schools was lacking in commitment to help solve these problems, and as students we felt it was our role to take initiative to make our community a better place. Based on our expertise we felt it would be best to focus on a subset of the problem, and utilizing our background in tech to innovate practical solutions.

After careful consideration, discussing with peers, and coordinating with teachers at the school we found the perfect idea. What many people do not know is our public schools have invested large sums of money into CCTV cameras that are placed around school to monitor issues. Unfortunately these cameras are not being used to their full potential as they are not actively monitoring threats that may be seen around campus and are rather a tool used in the aftermath of tragic events.

Project Aegis: Utilizing our schools CCTV cameras, we have built a weapon detection system, which will notify administration and local authorities to be able to adequately handle violent situations. Despite large enthusiasm from the school/district to help expedite our project to deployment, we had to navigate the bureaucratic process of the school. Working to gain project approvals, screenings of our technology, and hosting several meetings to get people on board were some of the hurdles we had to overcome.

Despite this, our team is very proud of the work we have been able to accomplish. Both from the projects standpoint we have been able to do our part by providing a practical solution to this nationwide problem, and from a personal standpoint we have grown a lot. We are continuously making improvements to the project, and venturing out to take on bigger challenges.