Student Feature - Up & Coming Engineer
Meet Alexia Savage By Howard Bussey and Harold Clark
When you were a student, did you ever dream about creating an invention that would solve a vital problem? Alexia Savage, then a 9th grader in Rush-Henrietta High School, did just that when she set out to design and build a “Self-Sufficient Early Warning Fire Detection System”! Envisioning a small, inexpensive device that could sit at a high point in a forest, measure temperatures, and remotely send that data and pictures of the surrounding landscape back to a ranger, Alexia set out to teach herself everything she would need to know, from coding to 3D-printing to circuit design. Alexia entered her invention in the 2021 Terra Finger Lakes Science & Engineering Fair (TRFSEF), where her work earned her a Grand Award of competing in the 2021 Genius Olympiad (www.geniusolympiad.org). She also won the Special Award for Women in Technology Award from Eagleview Technologies, a provider of aerial imagery, data analytics and geographic information system solutions with operations in Rochester (www.eagleview.com). Her biggest challenge in the project was the software. She first approached this with an Arduino board, but the limitations of the Arduino system and the complexities of C++ software development propelled her to the Python/Raspberry Pi systems. System economics also presents challenges: for instance, each assembly should be inexpensive enough to be widely deployed, and, when necessary, easily replaced. Prior to starting on her project, Alexia surveyed products in the area, and chose a niche not occupied in the space of commerciallyavailable systems.
16 | The ROCHESTER ENGINEER SEPTEMBER 2021
Working with only occasional guidance from her father, Alexia has integrated the processor, the camera, and the PyJuice Hat (an uninterruptible power supply) and started the software development. The assembly is shown in Figure 2. She also used 3-D modeling and design software to create a case, which was 3-D printed for her project as shown in Figure 3. Her latest improvement has been adding a solar panel to charge the batteries, so the system can be truly self-sufficient. Alexia realizes there is plenty more work to be done. Data communication software remains a challenge to allow the self-sufficient fire detection assemblies to use the image processing system to detect smoke and flame. Future challenges include night-time smoke detection, data communication in wilderness up and coming engineer
