DevFest Santa Cruz · 2023
Object detection: TensorFlow and Transfer Learning to the rescue
December 9, 2023, DevFest of the Google developer community in Santa Cruz (GDG Santa Cruz), main auditorium of Universidad Privada Domingo Savio. A talk for around 200 people — the largest audience I have spoken to so far.
The record
The talk in numbers
- Date
- December 9, 2023
- Audience
- ~200 attendees
- Venue
- Universidad Privada Domingo Savio — main auditorium
- Role
- Speaker
The official speaker artwork for the event, published by the Google developer community in Santa Cruz.
See the official event pageThe content
Detecting smoke before the fire grows
The problem
Wildfires in Santa Cruz are detected late. The earlier you see smoke, the cheaper and safer the response is — so the question was whether a camera could raise that alert on its own.
The approach
Smoke detection with TensorFlow and transfer learning: instead of training a model from zero, reuse a pretrained detector and specialise it on smoke over forest imagery, which makes the dataset requirement realistic.
The point of the talk
Show the full path from a local problem to a working detector: data, transfer learning, inference on a camera feed and the alert that reaches the authorities. Applied AI, not a demo slide.
Record
The auditorium and the team
Mauricio Nuñez on stage at DevFest Santa Cruz presenting the talk on object detection with TensorFlow and Transfer Learning 
Live demo showing smoke detection over wildfire footage on both auditorium screens 
Full auditorium of Universidad Privada Domingo Savio during the talk 
Wide view of the audience and the stage during the DevFest session 
The talk's title slide projected while the audience follows the session 
Attendees taking notes during the technical part of the talk 
Part of the organising and speaker team at the DevFest Santa Cruz backdrop 
Community team posing with the GDG Santa Cruz sign at the venue entrance 
Volunteers and speakers at the DevFest photo stand 
Group photo with the full DevFest Santa Cruz audience in the auditorium
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