Pasayten's Methow Valley Bulletin Board

I still think there is a heck of a difference between posting one image roughly every hour and continuously streaming video.

In general with current tech it isn't possible from either a power standpoint or bandwidth cost standpoint to continuously upload video over existing cell networks. 5G helps (a lot) on the available bandwidth but eats more power **. In any autonomous IoT device you are constantly bouncing up against power and bandwidth limits.

FRS mesh networks sip power but have transfer speeds and latency just slightly better than old-style dialup modems. You aren't uploading video on a 100kb/s pipe.

Anyone who hacked or jailbreaked such a device would run up against the same physical limits.

** And note that we don't have 5G here, and a lot of rural areas don't have it and aren't likely to get it soon.

... but more likely ...

--- OR ---

Thanks, I do appreciate the comment.

I agree 100% that if people had perfect situational awareness and were vigilant 24/7x360 degrees this product and technology would not be necessary. However, real-world experience with real wildfires has emphatically shown that is not the case.

As for recording and privacy, we've put a heck of a lot of thought into it:

1. The optimum placement for these gadgets has nothing to do with likely areas of human activity.
1. These gadgets are sensitive to local weather, and work harder in those hot, dry, and windy periods when people are unlikely to be doing much outside.
1. There is only a few kilobytes of writable local storage on the devices, which makes it impossible for them to record video and store it on the device.
1. These devices will depend on the cellular network and autonomous FRS mesh networks. Both low bandwidth (especially for FRS mesh) and high data costs (cellular) preclude recording video from these devices.

Having said all that, these devices will send a very low-quality thumbnail image to the back end approximately once per hour. These images approximately looking like so:

Each of the above images are less than 12kb.

I am considering using a cartoon effect or similar to further protect privacy and bandwidth:
In the future we will probably (at very infrequent and effectively random intervals) save abstracted versions of images (think a wire-frame version of the scene the optical sensor perceives) to use as training data to make better fire detectors.

The app plugs into the sensor network.

One final point. Even if you can look out your window 24/7, you can't look at a few dozen sensors within a mile or so of you simultaneously. A lot of the power and effectiveness of this system is that there would be a network of sensors and not just one on your windowsill. And by using multiple sensors and an understanding of fire behavior we can mitigate the false positive problems that have plagued all previous attempts at using automated sensors to solve this problem.

Thanks for that.

I agree that the retardant products are very impressive. I'm just very concerned about whether they can be used on a large scale at a realistic cost.

I was agreeing with your idea/tech and hope to see it come to fruition. The house gel I don’t think is highly effective (you brought it into the convo) the roadside/property extinguishment from human activity is new to the market and I see as having practical application. The video of the trials was pretty impressive!

I agree both of those products have their place and are no doubt useful. It is likely going to be insanely expensive to deploy them on a large enough scale to make a huge difference (none of those products are cheap). In fact, the per-acre costs of those products is in the ballpark of mechanical fuel treatments (~~ $1000 per acre) and the effects don't last as long.

My own idea is to deploy a sensor network to specific areas during periods of high fire danger. "Deploy" is probably too fancy a word, because all you have to do is mount the sensor on a tripod and hook it up to a battery and solar panel. The network is self-organizing so there is zero (or for all practical purposes zero) setup required.

You can read about the sensor tech here:

https://uspto.report/patent/grant/11,145,090

I’m not saying either/or, the fire gel is for pre-treating houses when fire is imminent, this new product is for pre-treating properties and roadways to prevent fire from humans being able to get going. Both things I think have needed applications, I hope to see them happen!

This stuff has been around for years (Barricade Fire Gel) and is known to work:

https://firegel.com

My observation based on experiences here, when I worked fires, and based on others experiences is that there is a terrible situational awareness problem that just isn't being solved. My idea is to provide tools to improve situational awareness for both firefighters and civilians caught up in a wildfire.

dorankj wrote: ↑Sat Dec 04, 2021 8:38 am There are also some great new pre-treatment gels California is using by perimeter solutions that I think will have great benefit here too. I don’t know how to do links (just a dumb firefighter) but I read a great story from Bloomberg.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features ... -wildfires

There are also some great new pre-treatment gels California is using by perimeter solutions that I think will have great benefit here too. I don’t know how to do links (just a dumb firefighter) but I read a great story from Bloomberg.

Background: I've been working on a low-cost, high-reliability wildfire detector for some years. Right now I and some partners are trying to work out a business model that would make such a detector of practical value for people who live in vulnerable areas. So I'm trying to make a first cut at collecting some data about potential customers.

1. If there was a free app on your phone that provided early notification of wildfires in your immediate area would you use it?
1. Would you host a wildfire detector (basically a self-contained sensor with a battery and solar panel) on your property?
1. Would you rent such a wildfire detector (say for $250 per month) temporarily to provide better warning to you during a wildfire emergency?
1. Would you pay extra (say $10/month) for an app with some additional features than just fire notifications (see below).

Now for some questions about extra app features. Which of these features would you consider worthwhile?

1. A real-time status display on a map showing all of the detectors in the area and showing whether they have or have not detected fire.
1. Up-to-date fire perimeter data (as opposed to the very approximate data provided on Google Maps).
1. Up-to-date evacuation zones.
1. Short-term weather forecasts, in particular warnings of high wind events and major shifts in wind direction in the next 3 to 12 hours.
1. Short-term fire forecasts (e.g. estimating where an active fire will be active in 3 or 6 or 12 hours).
1. Information on where to stay if you are evacuated, optionally with a connection to your homeowner's insurance to pay for your stay.
1. Information on where to house your pets if you are evacuated.
1. Information on where to house your horses if you are evacuated.
1. A service (at extra cost) to provide secure storage of critical documents and other valuables you removed from your home when you evacuated.