Spark Defense

Wildfires will no longer ruin the health of the masses

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Inspiration

The inspiration for our project came from our teacher who passed away last week due to an unfortunate incident on the boat, The Conception. This was a huge loss to all of us as he was our favorite teacher so when we realized we could try to improve communication systems and detection of these fires, we decided to start to build a project on this.

What it does

There is a front end and a back end. The front end is out Spark Defense web application interface on Wix, which is used to set up a data base with user medical information. This information is stored for easy access later on in case of an emergency. The back end of our code is put together by a mesh network of raspberry pi's, which goes through a series of servers and a fire response survey is sent to the user. The user will get the message because he will be previously connected by the registration on the Spark Defense Wix site. The data from the google form will be converted to a CSV file and then parsed into the most useful graphs for doctors to interpret. These graphs will help the doctors allocate time and resources the most efficiently based on the damage to the community.

How we built it

We built the front end by using Wix and setting a hyperlink to our 1st google form which is used to register the user. Then we used two raspberry pi's which we connected to a twilio sms broker. The broker is used to send messages as quickly as possible to all the subscribers. The data analysis code is created with the pandas python module in which we put in data and it quickly generates useful graphs. There is also many checking statements to make sure all connections have gone through such as message status commands.

Challenges we ran into

Some challenges we ran into as we were getting started was the ability to break an extremely complicated idea into simpler concepts. Another issue was our broker had only $15 loaded into it so we had to sparingly send messages as it took money from our account every time. We solved these issue by breaking things down on a whiteboard and making good use of our psuedocode.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Some accomplishments we are proud of is our ability to create a nearly larges scale feasible product within 18 hours. We feel as though in 18 hours we have learned more about networking than we typically learn in school. Another accomplishment we are proud of is our csv file parser which instantly converts messy data into easy to read charts, this is a pinnacle aspect of our project and it took a very long time to understand so we are proud of ourselves.

What we learned

We learned many networking concepts and topologies through this experience, such as, Mesh Networking, and SMS protocols. We also learned how to break complex problems into simpler tasks and finish work that way. It helped when one of us did a deep dive of study into Network Topologies, and someone else would learn about raspberry pi protocols, and someone else would test for connections. This made us bond and learn how to work better as a team on top of the Computer Science knowledge we gained.

What's next for Spark Defense

Next Spark Defense wants to find a more cheap way to implement this project on a large scale. This would help much more communities and this would help truly test the scalability of the project. Since we have not implemented this concept throw scenarios with high network traffic we still need to observe changes as packet sizes increase in bigger communities.

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