Monday, October 7, 2013

Shifting Gears - Fireball Sensor Grenade


Intel’s Fireball Sensor Goes Where First Responders Can’t, Reports Back to Your Phone

September 12th, 2011
by Avram Piltch
from LAPTOP Online

Today, at Intel’s IDF Day Zero presentations, the company showed off a number technologies designed to help communities respond to disasters large and small. Perhaps the most interesting of these is a balll shaped sensor device designed for firemen that Intel simply calls the Fireball.

Though it looks like Princess Leia’s themal detonator, the hand sized orb is designed to save lives by detecting hazardous gases in burning buildings. First responders can throw the device into a building like a factory that has a strong likelihood of releasing dangerous chemicals into the air. Once the Fireball is inside, its gas sensors test the air for carbon dioxide, ammonia, nitrogen, and other toxic gases then relay a Wi-Fi signal back to a small Atom-powered server in the fire truck. The server relays a signal to the responders’ smartphones where an app shows them a report of conditions inside the building, which they can use to decide whether or not to go in.

In addition to the Fireball, Intel is testing the technology in a number of othr which then sends them to an app on the responders’ smart phones. The fire team can then decide whether its safe to enter the building.er devices, including a toxic fumes sensor designed to detect terrorist attacks at airports and other sensitive locations. The company doesn’t plan to mass produce its devices and sell them under the Intel brand, but instead to share these reference designs with partners who will productize them.

Intel builds sensor grenade for firemen
By Jack Clark
From ZDNet UK
13 September, 2011

PHOTO Intel's Rapid Prototyping Group has been working on technologies in the field of machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. On Monday, at its Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, the chipmaker gave ZDNet UK a look at some of the results, including a throwable sensor for firefighters, a device for studying water quality, and a module for monitoring the stability of large structures such as oil rigs.

The prototype Fireball throwable sensor (pictured) is able to monitor air quality by studying the levels of specific gases in the air around it — ammonia, nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide — along with the air temperature. Data from the sensor is sent to a server located in the fire engine, and then sent on to smartphones and other devices that display the information to the firefighters. Multiple sensors can be used at once and their data aggregated and browsed.

The Fireball is due to go into trials with a US-based fire department soon, according to Intel senior principal engineer Terry O'Shea. The device took six weeks to make, he said.

In the next generation of the device, the Fireball will be able to feed its location back to the server. This will be done via radio triangulation between the separate fireballs and their main receiver on the fire engine, O'Shea said.

Weight-wise, the device felt about as heavy as a 500g bag of sugar.

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