Inspiration
Matt was in Chico and a wildfire affected his family and community last November (2018). This experience made him realize that an early warning would have significantly reduced the losses incurred and mentally prepared everyone for an evacuation. Therefore, we decided to tackle this problem that we see greatly affecting our dear ones in California.
What it Does
It is a proof of concept of an early warning system. We built a device that would be part of a network of devices to be deployed in wildfire prone areas. These would monitor and detect the start of possible fires so evacuations could be issued earlier. The embedded microcomputer provides temperature monitoring via sensors - its data is sent to a central system that issues alerts if the temperature is higher than the threshold. The probability of a wildfire breaking out is based on the user's inputted location. If this device was deployed in the field it would be connected to the central system via a cellular network and solar powered. Furthermore, additional sensors such as humidity and AQI detector can be added to formulate an algorithm to calculate probability more precisely.
How We Built It
The front end is developed via HTML and takes the user's location as the input. It then converts it into coordinates using GoogleMaps API. It then finds the nearest sensor (Raspberry Pi based) to return the current temperature and issues a warning accordingly. This is done in the backend using Python and JavaScript.
Challenges We Ran Into
Difficulties networking Raspberry Pi to our computer due to security issues. Also API integration and using Flask.
Accomplishments That We're Proud Of
We were able to produce a final product, and we are all first-time hackers!
What We Learned
We taught ourselves new languages, how to build a webpage, and how to interface electronic hardware to software.
What's Next for HackDavis2019
Bigger challenges, bigger participation especially for first-timers, more focus on social good.
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