STEM-In-Action Spring Scoop: StopFire Brigade
eCYBERMISSION STEM-In-Action Grant winning teams have been hard at work for the past year advancing their projects to make a difference in their communities. If you're new to the eCYBERMISSION blog, the Army Educational Outreach Program (AEOP) awards STEM-In-Action Grants of up to $5,000 to eCYBERMISSION teams that wish to further develop and implement their projects in their communities. We're checking back in with this year's STEM-In-Action Grant teams to get the inside scoop on their project progress. For our final Spring Scoop, we're catching up with team StopFire Brigade.
___________________________
Hello! We are excited to share the progress we have made so far with our STEM In-Action Grant. To begin, let's start with a recap of what we had already achieved prior to starting with the grant.
The project started in September 2021. We (Matthew and Sean) had met each other because we were in the same classes and became friends. We both had expressed interest in joining West Middle School’s eCYBERMISSION club and decided to team up and work on a project. We decided on creating an early fire detection warning system that would alert nearby homeowners and authorities that a fire is coming. We used an Arduino to detect the fire, a GSM texting module to send the message, and a GPS module to detect the location. So when the Arduino detects the fire, the GSM texting module will send a message to anyone who lives around the location detected by the GPS module. Our device was encased by a 3D printed case. We met with our local fire warden and he thought that our device had potential to help lots of people.
___________________________
Hello! We are excited to share the progress we have made so far with our STEM In-Action Grant. To begin, let's start with a recap of what we had already achieved prior to starting with the grant.
The project started in September 2021. We (Matthew and Sean) had met each other because we were in the same classes and became friends. We both had expressed interest in joining West Middle School’s eCYBERMISSION club and decided to team up and work on a project. We decided on creating an early fire detection warning system that would alert nearby homeowners and authorities that a fire is coming. We used an Arduino to detect the fire, a GSM texting module to send the message, and a GPS module to detect the location. So when the Arduino detects the fire, the GSM texting module will send a message to anyone who lives around the location detected by the GPS module. Our device was encased by a 3D printed case. We met with our local fire warden and he thought that our device had potential to help lots of people.
We submitted our project to the eCYBERMISSION competition and we advanced all the way to nationals. If you would like to see our presentation from the National Judging & Educational Event (NJ&EE), please click this link: StopFire Brigade National Showcase Presentation. While we did not get first place in the competition, we both agreed that we wanted to continue working on and improving our design. So we applied for the STEM-In-Action Grant and we were selected as one of the five groups to receive the grant.
We started to work on the grant in late September of last year because that’s when we got back to school and had a few weeks to settle in. After a few weeks, we decided upon a plan for the grant. We would first work on improving our case, then improve the actual design of the project. We have spent the past few months working on the case. The first thing we did was use the grant money to order a new 3D printer. We have been working through some issues with our 3D printer, but we have begun to print out some 3D prints and have been working on designing our new and improved case for our device.
Some improvements we would like to make to our already improved prototype are to make sure the solar panel is fully functional by itself, add a better case to fit the new and improved solar panel, use different software like a raspberry pi, make it more compact, and having more antennas to receive signals to denser forests. We plan on implementing these things later this year.
___________________________
StopFire Brigade can't be stopped! They've made great progress on their early warning detection system and have great plans to improve. We're sure this won't be the last we'll see of them!
Registration for the 2023-2024 eCYBERMISSION competition opens in August and the Mini-Grant application is now open.
Faith Benner
Sr. Communications and Marketing Specialist
Comments
Post a Comment
We welcome your comments and expect that our conversation will follow the general rules of respectful civil discourse. This is a moderated blog, and we will only post comments from bloggers over 13 years of age that relate to eCYBERMISSION. We will review comments for posting within one business day. Bloggers are fully responsible for everything that they submit in their comments, and all posted comments are in the public domain. We do not discriminate against any views, but we reserve the right not to post comments.