In view of the rising crime rate here on campus and the difficulties that many victims faced with identifying crime suspects, we developed PepGuard, an augmented pepper-spray. Our device will be paired and connected with a Bluetooth-enabled cell phone at all time. When triggered, it will automatically take a picture of the crime suspect as the deterrent is released, and forwards the picture to the cell phone via Bluetooth. It also directs the cell phone to make an emergency phone call to a pre-configured number, such as the police emergency line at 911.

        As a working prototype developed in Cornell ECE4760, our device currently includes an Atmel® ATmega1284P microcontroller from the course, a camera module with a high power LED as flash light, a Bluetooth® transceiver and various supporting components mounted on the solder-board. The total development cost is kept under $100 in compliance with the project requirement.