Family app · live
Energy Scanner
Bedtime had become a nightly negotiation. I built a routine that ends with a neutral machine, not a parent, deciding it's time to sleep.
Routinesteps first, scan as the finale
2 scanspalm pad, or a photo with a live aura
On-devicephotos never leave the phone
Greya grown-up switch makes every scan read sleepy
The idea
Kids tick off their bedtime steps (bath, PJs, teeth, potty, book), then scan. The reading is a color from Rainbow (far too energetic for sleep) down to Grey (time to recharge). A neutral authority makes the call, which takes the argument off the parent.
Two ways to scan
- Palm scan: press and hold the pad until the ring fills.
- Photo scan: take or upload a photo and the child's energy glows off them as an animated aura, softer and slower when sleepy, brightest at Rainbow. Grown-ups can save or share it.
Decisions
- Routine first. A scan alone wears off, so it is the reward at the end of real steps, and it never reads Rainbow once every step is done.
- Privacy before camera. Kids' faces should never go to a cloud model, so the camera waited until the photo scan could run entirely on the phone: a person-segmentation model (MediaPipe) and a GPU shader. No server, no account, no tracking, and the page is locked so it can only talk to its own origin.
Status
Live. It started as a palm-scan prototype my kids tested at bedtime; the photo scan came once it could stay on the phone.