A group of Irish teenagers created an app that allows parents to spy on their babies, capturing the attention of the world’s biggest tech companies and landing them jobs at some of Silicon Valley’s top tech companies

Today, Pavel Tikh is an engineer at Google, living in San Francisco. Conor Dunican works for Dropbox. And Conor Lyden serves as a software engineer at Amazon, based in Seattle. They’re young Galway native adults who began studying computer science at university in 2017. Most of the world’s tech titans were founded decades ago, with the vast majority of the early technologies that brought us to today being made by scientists from the United States. However, it was the latter part of the last decade when they began experimenting with new technologies that were just beginning to gain mainstream momentum. It was the advent of the age of voice assistants, smart home equipment, and services that were interconnected and automated.<br><br>In the 1980s, IBM developed the smart home industry. By the 1990s, the first smartphone, smartwatch and tablet had been developed. But it was in the last five years, however, when the technology began to gain widespread acceptance. The Amazon Echo smart speakers were released in 2014 and in the following year the multi-room audio skill became one of the most used skills on the device. It was in 2016, that Google Home, a direct competitor to the Echo, was released. But it was only in 2017, that the age of smart homes flourished. Today, millions of homes around the world are equipped with smart speakers and smart home products.<br><br>Today, there are smart speakers, fridges, microwaves, vacuum cleaners, thermostats, toasters, blenders, lawn mowers, and even smart toilets. The world is more connected than ever. With the world becoming more connected every day, the three Irishmen decided to put their talents to use. They started working on a project, that they called BabyConnect. The BabyConnect system allowed parents to stream video and audio of their baby’s room to the Amazon Echo Show, Google Home Hub and Lenovo Smart Display, three of the most used smart home hubs in the world. They began working on the application in the first semester of their first year at the National University of Ireland, Galway. When they began experimenting with the new technologies, voice assistants were near unheard of. In fact, Amazon only just launched the Echo smart speaker in Ireland at the end of 2017. It was in April 2018, when the three fourth-year software development students released their app that allowed people to stream audio and video from their baby monitor to their smart home hub.<br><br>This app was thought of years before either Amazon or Google released their own baby monitoring systems through the use of their camera and Echo Show/Google Home Hub systems. In fact, even today, Nest and Ring, the two largest smart security camera brands don’t allow users to stream their cameras to smart home hubs. In fact, it was entirely revolutionary when the BabyConnect app was launched. This was the first time that any smart home product was able to allow users to stream their camera to their smart home display. This app captured the attention of the world’s biggest tech companies and after graduating from university in 2020, the young Irish software developers began working for Google, Amazon, and Dropbox, some of the world’s biggest tech companies.<br><br>Today, millions of homes around the world have smart products and the age of smart homes has flourished. A lot of the technologies we have today wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the technologies developed decades ago, by world renowned scientists, whose names are often forgotten by time. But sometimes, it’s the new technologies that are being experimented with that can push the boundaries of our future potential. These new advancements can change the world and create new and interesting prospects for the future. Three Irish young men did just that half a decade ago, creating an app that allowed users to stream their baby monitor to their home hub, landing them jobs at Google, Amazon, and Dropbox. By changing how technology is used, we can adapt to the ever changing world around us.