STEM-In-Action Follow Up: Blazing Radiance

As we near the time for new STEM-In-Action grant recipients to be selected, it’s time to circle back once more to see how our 2018 Teams took on their mission. Over the next five weeks, as we near the announcement of our newest grant winners, we’ll be following up with each team to see how their projects panned out and if they were able to help their community. First team we’re catching up with? Our 2018 People’s Choice Award Winners, Blazing Radiance!

Blazing Radiance at the 2018 National Judging & Educational Event (NJ&EE) Awards Banquet

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Inspired by the raging 2017 California Wildfires, we, Team Blazing Radiance, created FICSS (Fire Indicators Combined to Save Souls), an early wildfire detection system that notifies authorities about occurring wildfires before they escalate to uncontrollable levels, allowing both the firefighting process to begin faster and for park rangers to begin extinguishing small fires before firefighters arrive. A fire can spread to more than a football field worth of land, imposing environmental, financial, and human damage to nearby residents. By increasing the efficiency of the firefighting process as described, FICSS helps decrease the amount of destruction caused by these fires, potentially reduces government funding for wildfire management, and saves lives. 

We have been finalizing components for FICSS since August to ensure maximum longevity of the product and reliability of its alerts. Our previous transceiver’s range was too short of what we were looking for, so we changed to GSM technology (cell phone connectivity). Instead of using an infrared sensor, we have switched to an ArduCam (Arduino Camera). This technology allows us to increase our range from a couple of feet to a couple of miles. In the past. we had issues with our infrared sensor making false detections by detecting the sun as a fire. With the ArduCam, we will be able to heavily reduce the false detections because it takes a photo of the fire instead of actually attempting to sense it. Also, firefighters will also have access to photos of the fires if needed. As of right down, we are currently in the process of connecting the ArduCam with the cloud image processing service but we can’t find a solution. Because of this huge roadblock, we started doing more research where we found an article “RTOS Based Image Recognition & Location Finder Using GPS, GSM, and OpenCV” by the International Advanced Research Journal in Science, Engineering and Technology. It has had what we were looking for “RTOS or a Real-time Operating System, image recognition, GPS, GMS. But, in addition, it has some added features that we can use such as OpenCV and facial recognition. OpenCV would be helpful when programming and coding and facial recognition would be helpful because some forest fires are human created on purpose. With image recognition and facial recognition, it could take an image of the person, what the person is doing (if the fire is started purposely or not), and be able to recognize who the person is.

Front view of Arduino GSM

We plan on making two versions of FICSS, a version with the ArduCam and a version following the new article we found.  After assembling both versions of FICSS, we will test them both in a location that we are currently finalizing. It will likely be in our own backyards. The one that works the best will be the one that we will move on with.  After that stage of testing is done and all edits have been made, we will move on to testing it in a setting similar to that of its intended one. We are thinking about working with the Little Bennett Park to place our devices in their woods. In addition, we plan on talking to the National Fire Academy in Fredrick County, Maryland after. When talking to them we plan to ask them for constructive criticism and take what they tell us and improve FICSS.  When it is determined that FICSS is quality enough to be implemented, we will work with the firefighters and implement it in forests that are deemed to be wildfire-prone.  When we go to the National Fire Academy we plan to ask them if they know any magazines, county newspapers, or TV reporters that we can talk to.  We also plan on patenting FICSS because we believe that it can really help our Earth and save lives and stop the devastation of wildfires.

Back view of the Arduino

We ran into challenges when we began researching for infrared sensors and transceivers. Even though we spent weeks searching for potential candidates, we found that none of them had the range and reliability that we were looking for. We determined that continuing to search for candidates would be inefficient and that instead, we should look for other types of technology that can perform the same task. Because of our change of focus, we were able to find components that performed the same function as infrared sensors or transceivers with more reliability and a larger communication range.

Arduino Camera

We wanted to put the knowledge and positive experiences we gained from last year’s project towards a new idea in 2019 eCybermission competition. Unfortunately, we underestimated the time it would take us to complete the new project, which imposed tighter deadlines as we had to work around the busy schedules of all the community officials and groups we collaborated with. Since it was difficult to balance work between Stem-In-Action and the 2019 project on top of schoolwork and other competitions, for a time our work on FICSS was pushed back as it was the less urgent than the other tasks on our plates. We soon realized that disregarding Stem-In-Action even for a few months set us too far behind our already busy schedule to complete our work in time and with the quality we aspire for. Thus we scheduled work between both projects each week so while some members worked on the 2019 Mission Folder, the other continued researching for FICSS. Although this strategy did put us behind in sleep, we decided to make sacrifices do whatever it took to get work done for a few weeks, then devote a few days to sole relaxation. Not only did this allow us to finish our work, but it brought us closer together and gave us an irreplaceable feeling of accomplishment two nights ago upon submitting our mission folder and completing one milestone for FICSS.

 Testing Image captured after integrating camera with Arduino

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So amazed at all the progress this team has been making over the past few months. Hard work, determination and a passion for problem-solving can certainly pay off.

-Mission Control