Fire Forward Rate of Growth Sensors (FROGS)
What are they?
Forward Rate of Growth (FROG) sensors (patent pending) are devices that provide real-time data on conditions at the head of an active wildfire front where it is normally too dangerous for firefighters to work.
How do they work?
FROGS are designed to be air-dropped from a helicopter. These disposable units will transmit telemetry to a GPS equipped reusable rover until consumed. The rover is wirelessly linked to an on-board laptop which processes the data using our free EMD software. EMD can graph and log the incoming data from multiple nodes while outputting to KML format for viewing as a moving map in Google Earth.
What data is captured?
Telemetry includes temperature, pressure, humidity, air quality, preset trigger thermostat and IR (infrared) sunlight detection.
Why is this useful?
The main purpose is to calculate the rate of growth of a fire but logged metrics can also be used for fire behaviour analysis and model development. Ground crews can deploy a network of reusable versions of the device to sample conditions in an area of interest, data is collected using a rover in range on the ground or in the air.
What do they cost?
FROGS are priced at an affordable $99.99 each and the rover is a one-time cost of $194.99.
The reusable base version for localized sampling is $149.99.
FROG sensor deployment, a historic first!