Project Goal
The goal of Project Dante is to improve the efficiency of firefighting. The infrared images will enable firefighters to see fire hotspots and reduce the time it takes to contain a fire. It will also reduce the suprise of flare-ups. Although these are wonderful benefits, the main benefit is to make the most of the 4-5 minutes rescuers have to find and evacuate victims.
The Mask
Our mask is coated with mirror spray to be semi-reflective. The product is sprayed onto the surface that you don't want to be reflective and the opposite side will be reflective then. Lucky for us, this meant that we could spray the outside of the mask so that the inside was reflective. It took us multiple trials and tests to find the optimal range to coat the mask from. Eventually we decided that the best was 2 coats of spray from 2 feet away.
The Camera
Our camera is a standard Logitech webcam. It came with a hot mirror like almost all cameras. In order to modify it to let infrared light through (a hot mirror is designed to block infrared light), we had to remove the hot mirror with a hair dryer to loosen the glue and use a small screwdriver to pry it off. The next step was to add the cold mirror to the camera to block out visible light. Because of its size, the cold mirror had to be glued to the front of the camera on the outside of the plastic casing. When we tested it, everything looked different and pink tinged. See for yourself:
Processing the Images
To process the infrared images, the program picks up on two ranges of color that correspond with two different ranges of temperature. One range corresponds with the temperature of the human body and the other with the expected temperature of a fire.
Gallery of Images
Note: This is a compilation of photos from throughout the project. The ones with a pink tinge were taken with the modified infrared webcam. We included a few diagrams to illustrate the evolution of our project. And finally, a shoutout to our model in all of the pictures, Noah.