Live · in daily use
A community emergency and check-in app for farming families who live far from help.
Every evening, every member confirms they are okay with a single tap — and if someone doesn't, everyone knows within seconds. One press-and-hold raises the whole valley for an emergency, a fire or a medical crisis, with a GPS pin and a live message thread. Built for my own community by someone who lives in it, and in daily use there.
Screens use a fictional community and invented names.
How it works
At a set time each evening every member gets a reminder and taps once to confirm they're fine. The reminder, the check-in window and the sweep for anyone missing are all automatic — nobody has to remember to run anything.
Anyone who hasn't responded is flagged to the whole community that same evening — not the next morning, while it still matters. A missed check-in is never quietly explained away.
SOS, Fire and Medical. Each is press-and-hold with a cancel countdown, so a pocket press never wakes the whole community — but a real one reaches every phone at full alarm volume.
The three types are deliberately separate: what your neighbour brings when they come depends on which one you pressed.
Every alert carries a GPS snapshot taken at the moment it was raised, opening straight in Google Maps. Alongside it runs a live message thread where neighbours tap once to say "I'm on my way", or send a text update or voice note.
Resolving an alert takes two deliberate steps, so an emergency can't be closed by a stray tap.
People living together are grouped into a household, and a household member can confirm that someone who missed check-in — flat battery, no signal, asleep early — is safe.
That confirmation is always shown as exactly what it is: a vouch by someone else, never disguised as a real check-in. The community can see the difference at a glance.
Going away for a few days? Set the dates once. Check-ins pause from the start date and resume on the return date, and the community gets a heads-up to keep an eye on the property.
Emergency alerts still reach an away member — at normal volume rather than the alarm, because they're not the one who can help tonight.
The alarm sound belongs to live emergencies and nothing else. Reminders, updates and admin notices come through ordinary notification channels — so when a phone does scream at 2am, everybody already knows it's real.
Every update explains itself in plain language the first time the app opens after it lands. No silent changes to something people rely on.
More of the app
Admin tools, the emergency log, household groups and the settings that let each community run the app its own way.
The story
Farm Safety started with a simple problem: in a farming valley, the nearest neighbour can be kilometres away, and the nearest help much further. If something happens to you at night, who notices, and when?
No response has to mean something. A missed check-in is never quietly explained away.
The app answers that with a nightly check-in. At a set time each evening, every member gets a reminder and taps once to confirm they're okay. Anyone who doesn't respond is flagged to the whole community — not the next morning, but that same evening, while it still matters.
On top of that sits the emergency side: three hold-to-trigger buttons — SOS, Fire and Medical — that alert every member at full alarm volume, attach a GPS pin that opens straight in Google Maps, and open a live message thread where neighbours can say "I'm on my way" with one tap.
It runs as a lightweight Android app, distributed directly to the community with no app-store account needed, and updates are delivered over the air the moment they're ready.
How it's built
Boring, well-understood tools, put together carefully. The interesting part isn't the stack — it's the discipline around it.
Get in touch
Farm Safety was built for one valley, but the problem isn't unique to it. If your community, farm or organisation needs something similar — or something else entirely — tell me about it.