Teen inventor Ryan Honory recalls being traumatized by the deadly Camp wildfire in 2018 in Northern California. It killed 68 people and caused $16 billion in damage. He wasn’t injured physically, but witnessed first hand a raging brush fire eating up a mountainside in Northern California that imprinted a lasting brand on the 11-year-old kid.
“There was fear when I thought my house was burning down and then relief when it wasn’t. It was messed up! To feel that relief and then not care and then to realize how other people who lost their homes must feel. It was one big motivator,” Honory, now 17, recalls.
Honory traces the Camp Fire experience to his current engineering venture-- using AI and sensors to see, smell and feel early signs of a fire and to warn first responders to douse a flame before wind and dry conditions explode it into a devilish monster like the one he remembers as a child.
He began by building a relatively simple board with sensors and Raspberry Pi, then connecting Wi-Fi and AI, which now operates at the edge of the SensoRy AI platform. He founded the company in 2020 with funding from the Office of Naval Research and others. The latest sensors are far more sophisticated than early versions, he tells Fierce Electronics.
On Monday, he and a small team installed their first deployment along a ridge in Irvine, California, not far from the devastating wildfires that struck the Los Angeles area in early January and burned for more than a month. They expect to install five units by the end of March, and 25 before September. “It’s in the city of Irvine in a high fire risk area as it’s mostly windy and close to electric utility high voltage equipment and a lot of Wildland Urban Interface,” he explains.
The heart of the platform still relies on Raspberry Pi, but now has a “really reliable mesh routing mechanism” based on the BATMAN open protocol. “It’s definitely a full-blown computer in itself.” Sensors include three for temperature, smoke and flame detection. A gas sensor included is a chemical sensor and an optical sensor is based on infrared. AI is used at the edge to increase the likeliness of fire detection and to reduce false alarms. It is powered by solar.
“An incipient fire less than a foot in height can be detected at 1,200 feet line-of-sight and 300 feet non-line-of-sight,” Honory says. The platform meets Orange County Fire Academy recommended parameters. Cellular connections are used for cloud connections for some AI and to warn first responders. A patent is pending for proprietary AI and systems in the SensoRy AI platform, leaving in place a tad of mystery about how it all comes together.
Honory coded the platform and its AI using Python and JavaScript, among others, and confesses he encountered typical developer headaches. “Coding is definitely fun until you get to the moments when you can’t find what you need. At those moments, that’s definitely up there on the Top 10 most angry moments I’ve felt in my life.”
As for what’s next, Honory says he’s hoping to expand the wildfire detection network outside Orange County “and eventually across the country.” He’s keenly aware that scaling up is a problem for startups, complicated by finding customers and shopping for investors. So far, he’s depended on multiple rounds of funding from the Office of Naval Research and has entered a partnership with the Irvine Ranch Conservancy. Support from parents and educators played key roles, along with two current mentors: UCLA Engineering Prof. Pirouz Kavehpour and Jeff Shelton, a retired fire captain of 34 years and a wildland fire behavior analyst.
"Ryan's ability to identify, understand and conceptualize solutions to problems is well beyond what you would expect from someone his age. His intellect complements his passion for preserving the natural environment all in hopes of making a practical difference, first locally and then globally," Shelton says.
With several years already under his belt with SensoRy AI, Honory offers some perspective for other tech innovators: “I think one of the most important things to be successful is you have to have an emotional connection to it. If you are doing it just for college, it is much harder to feel passionate in the moment when you are hitting roadblocks, especially during coding. If you don’t feel an emotional connection, it’s much harder to succeed and reach your goal.”
N5 Sensors has been engaged with wildfire detection commercially for 2-plus years
A potential future competitor congratulated Honory on his early success. “Nothing makes me happier than seeing young people trying to find a solution to a problem. The fact he’s done this at his age—good for him,” says Debra Deininger, chief revenue officer at N5 Sensors.
N5 relies on sensors that act like an electronic nose to sniff out early fires and has recently passed its 3-year anniversary of the first unplanned fire the company ever detected. It has been on the commercial market for more than two years and in 2024 accurately detected 61 fires. “We are building partnerships and expanding deployments but there is lots more work to do,” Deininger says in an interview.
N5 started out technology from the University of Maryland in 2012. “Every firefighter wants to know where a fire starts. Even with all the protection in the world, we’re in a dangerous world,” Deininger says. N5 relies on AI and machine learning to sniff out elevated gases and particulates. As a fire grows, the movement of particles tends to be lighter and move further and faster. Smoke is complex and chemical reactions occur that change the gases present. Pattern recognition is used to show what the smoke smells like versus the cleaner air farther away.
One advantage of N5’s approach is not relying on optical sensors to protect privacy. “We’re not watching and not listening,” she adds. N5’s tech ends up costing a government or a large landowner $5 per acre per year and can be self-installed on a two-year contract.
To SensoRy AI and Honory she offers, “Congratulations on learning and trying to build a solution everybody needs. Find partners and find customers and the money will follow.”