Episode 210: Designing Software to Save Lives: DroneSense’s Mission with Charles Herrin

Episode notes

When developing software for public safety, what do you need?

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy!

Welcome to this 20-episode Texas Robotics Summit Mini Series! This 4 day event (March 4-7, 2024) was hosted at the Reveille Peak Ranch and by our friends at Granite Defense , and showcased the use of robotics (air/water/ground) in public safety via keynote presentations, training scenario stations, roundtable conversations, and more.

In this episode:

DroneSense's mission for better public safety software

Importance of user-friendly design in emergency operations

Collaboration between developers and first responders

Learn from Charles Herrin - the Manager of Product Management at DroneSense .

Charles talks about the importance of software in various industries, particularly in public safety. He explains that software is purpose-built to achieve specific outcomes and highlights the need for user-friendly and well-designed software in the public safety sector.

Charles also shares insights into DroneSense's mission and features, emphasizing the importance of situational awareness and low-latency video streaming. And lastly, but certainly not least, he addresses misconceptions about software development and offers advice for companies looking to develop software for the public safety market.

So click play now to find out what he has to share! And stay tuned for the next Mini Series episode!

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources!

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Kevin's intro: the Texas Robotics Summit mini-series
2. 0:45 Charles Herrin of DroneSense joins
3. 1:01 Wildlife at the ranch
4. 1:53 Building what the customer actually needs
5. 2:12 Why software is purpose-built for outcomes
6. 3:42 What public safety needs from software
7. 5:12 What UI and UX mean
8. 5:30 The DroneSense story and features
9. 7:17 Use cases like FDNY and low-latency video
10. 8:32 Misconceptions about building software
11. 11:36 Advice for companies building for public safety
12. 12:45 Parting advice: talk to your customers
13. 13:26 Closing

Questions answered in this episode

What problem did DroneSense set out to solve?

Charles Herrin explains that DroneSense was founded in 2016 after a search and rescue event where the founders realized there was not a great solution to get information from the drone to the people making decisions. The company focuses on getting drone video to decision-makers as quickly as possible with low latency, along with situational awareness tools.

Hear it at 5:41

How does DroneSense help with firefighting operations?

Kevin Sofen mentions that FDNY guys talked about using DroneSense by putting tablets on ladder trucks so firefighters can see the live drone stream and get better context on where to direct water during fire operations.

Hear it at 7:17

What is the biggest misconception first responders have about software?

Charles Herrin says the biggest challenge is helping first responders understand the process of building software. People are used to having what they need immediately and do not realize how complicated software actually is to build, often requiring teams of engineers and significant time.

Hear it at 8:49

What advice does Charles Herrin give to companies developing public safety software?

He advises companies to be so close to their customers that they are almost part of their family, and to listen carefully because the public safety community talks to each other. Companies should build human-centered tools that help first responders get their job done rather than just building software they think is great.

Hear it at 11:50

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 210 transcript

Designing Software to Save Lives: DroneSense’s Mission with Charles Herrin

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Charles Herrin

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Welcome to a 20-episode mini-series at the Texas Robotics Summit, hosted by our friends at Granite Defense. We dive into the evolving world of drones and robotics in public safety aviation. Through 20 fantastic conversations with leaders across public safety, from the fire service, law enforcement, EMS operations, wildlife management, and more, we explore the challenges, and the critical role of technology in enhancing emergency services operations. A special thanks to the sponsor of the Smart Firefighting podcast, W.S. Darley & Company, for making this podcast possible. Enjoy the show. We are live here at the Texas Robotics Show, sitting alongside Charles Herrin, the manager of product management at DroneSense. Charles, what's going on, man?

[0:54] Charles Herrin: Hey, man. How are you doing? I'm great. It's been great to be here and just getting to see all this equipment, meeting all these cool people.

[1:01] Kevin Sofen: I mean, it's kind of like Disneyland out here. I mean, with all the toys and different experiences, I almost feel like you need like your fast pass to go to like see the all-tel experience over here. And then the DJI experience over here, it's quite the sight.

[1:14] Charles Herrin: Yeah, I'm anxious to get on those motorcycles and have a drone chase me around.

[1:18] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, and I heard there was a mountain lion on the ranch yesterday.

[1:22] Charles Herrin: Oh really? Yeah.

[1:24] Kevin Sofen: Oh, I didn't see that. Yeah, I mean, they also, in the safety briefing, they were like, there are black widows, There are, oh no, I guess there's three things. Spiders, snakes, and scorpions on the ranch.

[1:32] Charles Herrin: Yes, the ranch can take you out if you let it.

[1:35] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, and that looks like a wasp that just flew under a table that I would love to not be close to me.

[1:42] Charles Herrin: Yeah, he's a big one.

[1:43] Kevin Sofen: Dude, that thing is massive. So, not including the insects that are around here, which I'm gonna keep an eye on that while we're podcasting here. You, after talking to you last night, you seemed to have, I would call you maybe a software extraordinaire?

[1:59] Charles Herrin: I don't know if I'd go that far, but I've been around software for a long time, building it, working with teams, building it. My role is really, how do I get what the customer needs and get the engineering team to build what they really need?

[2:12] Kevin Sofen: So in your words, I mean, I think a lot of times we hear software. And it's a bit nebulous, like, software this, software that. But many times, people don't really realize how software is embedded to everything that we do. But in your words, and maybe in kind of, you can take it from a couple different angles, but like, what is software?

[2:30] Charles Herrin: Yeah, it's a great question, and you're right. It is, it permeates throughout our entire society. You know, we have, I have a watch sitting here that's taking my heartbeat right now, and there's software on this watch that's reading the sensor, it's putting the data out, it's representing it to me, it's also recording it. So it's doing all these things that just kind of happen in the background, and we've gotten so used to it. Really what it is it's a bunch of ones and zeros. You hear that, but what the hell does that mean, right? So I think what it really is it's code, but it's really purpose-built to get an outcome. So when you think about the software on my watch, they wanted to represent the heartbeat, they wanted to capture it. So someone went and wrote code, and really it doesn't matter if you understand code, it's really just, know that it's something that's really just purpose-driven to give you an outcome. And if you look at it that way, you can really start to just break it down into really small chunks. So if I want to get a drone to fly, that software is fairly complicated. But if I need a sensor in my car just to tell me that something's going wrong, that's not very complicated, but it's the same concept.

[3:42] Kevin Sofen: And when thinking about, you mentioned ones and zeros, and it's just embedded to your watch, expand upon that a little bit more within the context of public safety. and then maybe even you can allude to, you know, how, why DroneSense exists.

[3:56] Charles Herrin: Yeah, so really in public safety, the thing that I've noticed, I didn't have a background in public safety. I come from enterprise software. And what I noticed is that they get a lot of software that's not very great. It's not usable, right? And a lot of times they are okay with that because that's just what they're told to do. One of the things that DroneSense really wanted to solve was how do we make it really easy, beautiful, and work really well? And do it in a way that someone who's under duress, someone who's stressed out in a situation, trying to get an outcome, they need to use this tool to get the outcome, save the person, complete the mission, operation, whatever. And so I think that's really important for public safety to get software that is integrated and usable and good software. And you know the difference. We've all used Excel. I mean, there's software in your head. If you've ever used QuickBooks, and you probably wanna throw your computer against the wall like I do when I have to use that. But there's also software, you know, you pull up your iPhone and you go flipping through your photos and all of that, and it's really easy to use. So there's a huge gap in the public safety world for really good, usable, well-designed software.

[5:12] Kevin Sofen: And in your words, what is UIUX?

[5:15] Charles Herrin: It's what you see and interact with. It's when you press buttons, what you see on the screen, it's the workflows. So if you have easy workflows that make sense or intuitive, right, that's UI and UX, user experience and user interface.

[5:30] Kevin Sofen: And expand to me a little bit more about DroneSense. I obviously know DroneSense, but for those of us that don't know who, what, when, where, why DroneSense, give me the skinny.

[5:41] Charles Herrin: Yeah, so DroneSense was started in 2016 And it was founded really out of a SAR event. It was crazy. So, you know, the founders knew something with this drone thing, there's something there. So they started tinkering with it. They went to a SAR event and they were out on the outskirts. And by the end, they were in the middle, right next to the SWAT team, because they were streaming that video. And what they realized was that there is not a great solution to get that, you know, the information from the device to the people making the decisions. And so that was an eye-opener. So that's kind of where the concept was born. And then noticing that the market of public safety was underserved. And that's really, it was a passion project in that sense. And it's just continued and we've grown. We're about 60 people now and we're just continuing to grow and we're global and it's just kind of a crazy ride. But really the key is we take drone video, we get it to the people as quickly as possible with low latency who need it. They can have it on their cell phone, they can go on the web, any device that they wanna get that video on, they can get it. And then we have situational awareness with maps and they can drop markers and they communicate with each other through the map. So build out an operational plan and everybody gets to see what's going on in that mission. We show other drones in the mission so you can deconflict and you can make sure you're not running into each other. You can deconflict with manned aviation. And so the premise is situational awareness and the bread and butter is low latency video streaming.

[7:17] Kevin Sofen: It was cool to have an FDNY guys on here yesterday and they were talking about how they use drone sense. And one example was when the drone stream is happening and there's a drone up in the sky being able to take that information and they now put actually tablet on the ladders to be able to give better context to the firefighters on the ladder trucks to know in the simplest terms where to put the wet stuff and the red stuff.

[7:41] Charles Herrin: Yeah, I think that's a great use case. I heard that and I'm always impressed with how our customers are using the tools. We think we know how they're gonna use it and then they do stuff like this that just, yes, that's awesome.

[7:55] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, I mean, a lot of it comes back to data is being created and then it needs to be transmitted and shown and displayed somewhere else.

[8:04] Charles Herrin: Yeah, and if you imagine how much time, effort, like how much the value of the building that they're saving, all of those things, you know, the other thing that I've really learned is seconds matter. And we say that a lot, but it's true. Someone who's in true duress, a minute could be the difference between a good outcome and a bad outcome. So I really love how they just, they really push us and make us think differently.

[8:32] Kevin Sofen: So we touched on that a little bit earlier because when I come back to it, but just kind of the first responder perspective and experience with software in general? I'm more interested in what are some misconceptions and maybe misunderstandings that public safety or first responders in general have about software?

[8:49] Charles Herrin: Yeah, great question. I think the biggest challenge I find is trying to have them understand the process of building software. So we get so used to just having what we need immediately. And there's a lot of work ahead of time to actually get to this really nice user interface that works well, that does everything you want. And so I think the biggest misconception, I mean, there's a couple of things they have going on. They have all these different software components they have to interact with in their car, for reporting, for calls for service. Now they have drone software and there's not really a good aggregator of that, right? And so I think people get really just frustrated that they don't have what they need. And what I think the biggest misconception really is around how complicated some of the software actually is to build, right? Cause we're just so used to having it and having it around. It takes teams of engineers to build this stuff. And so patience with companies that are trying to be on the bleeding edge, but really again, at the end of the day, they are trying to do their job. and software is just the tool that helps them get their job done. So they just need it to work, they just need it to be, you know, a tool and not a hindrance.

[10:09] Kevin Sofen: It's funny, I've worked with a couple different manufacturing companies that do hardware and software. And I think it's for those that are not deeply embedded into the creation of software realm, it's like, oh, I just do this and that. And it's like, well, that very well could take like four months and like 20 people doing it.

[10:25] Charles Herrin: Yeah. I'm actually, I've been doing this 20 years and I'm surprised sometimes at the complexity that shows up. And then there are times when it is a dead simple change. It's a line of code and you just solved a problem that has been sitting around lingering. So as an example, we're about to release something as simple as addresses, right? So I want to see the address on top of this house on an overlay map. You can do that all day long and this is where they get frustrated because you can go to Google Maps or these other mapping programs, and it's just there. So of course, you would assume that it should just be very super simple, just there, it's everywhere, it's ubiquitous. Well, in this case, we had done months of groundwork last year to build a map layer manager to make that experience better. Well, that groundwork allowed us to change a line of code and make it feel like, man, it was just a flip of a switch. But in essence, there was all of this pre-work that had to be done before we got to the to the point where it was just that easy.

[11:27] Kevin Sofen: It's like success in general. I mean, it's like some people are like, oh, it's an overnight success, but it's like, no, there was five years of work before the overnight success.

[11:33] Charles Herrin: Oh, absolutely. That happens all the time, right?

[11:36] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. So what maybe message or wisdom, you've kind of alluded to it before, but what might be some suggestions you would have for other companies or entrepreneurs that are looking to develop software in particular for the public safety market?

[11:50] Charles Herrin: Yeah, I think the best advice I can give is this community talks to each other and you need to listen to them. Be so close to your customer that you're almost part of their family. And that's really the success we have is we have people that are, we're in public safety, they understand all of the operations, but it's just really a, it's a brotherhood. It's really cool to be a part of. And so I would say the thing with some software companies is they think their software is really the bee's knees. It's just, that's the end all. The end of the day, if your software is not being used in the field to do really good things, then you're just building software. What you really need to do is build a human centered ecosystem of tools that help them in their toolbox that they can whip out and just get their job done.

[12:45] Kevin Sofen: I was gonna ask you for a mic drop, but that was basically it. And man, well said, I guess you just brought it up, but if you could leave us with any final thoughts, questions, even a challenge, or a favorite quote of yours here today, what might that be?

[12:59] Charles Herrin: Yeah, putting me on the spot here, I like it. I think that the sky's the limit and really so many people are working hard, working towards a similar goal. And so, you know, we try not to be combative with our other peers in the industry. And I would just say the same for everybody else. And talk to your customers. They will tell you everything you need to know.

[13:26] Kevin Sofen: Charles, pleasure talking with you, man. Thanks for your time today and look forward to staying in touch and collaborating in the future.

[13:31] Charles Herrin: Yeah, definitely. I really appreciate it was great.

[13:33] Kevin Sofen: Well done. See you. Thanks for tuning into this mini series created at the Texas Robotics Summit hosted by Granite Defense. Make sure to put this amazing event on your calendar for 2025. For this podcast episode, what'd you like? What'd you think? Drop us a comment on social media and let us know your favorite quote. Thanks for all that you do. Have a great day ahead.