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The same tools can also be used as agencies carry out prescribed burns, planned fires that can help control overgrown vegetation. One of the ironies of firefighting in Western states is that it has made wildfires bigger over time: Decades of suppressing fires mean that there s much more fuel to burn when a fire does get out of control. Carefully burning some areas when the conditions are appropriate can help, and Pano s cameras can monitor the work to make sure nothing goes awry.

The startup, which raised another $17 million in July from such strategic investors as the VC arms of T-Mobile and Salesforce along with continued investment from Convective and other early backers, calculates that it would take around 15,000 of its stations to cover all of the medium- and high-risk areas susceptible to wildfires in the United States. We come from the consumer electronics industry, where we re used to shipping millions of units of product, says Kastner, who oversaw operations and supply chain at such companies as Whistle, the pet activity collar, and Nest, the smart thermostat and home camera company. So deploying 15,000 of these doesn t scare us at all. There s no shortage of demand from fire agencies, she says, but government procurement takes time. Right now, utility companies are the fastest to adopt the service.

BurnBot, another startup in Convective s portfolio, makes remotely-controlled equipment that can burn a landscape inside a closed chamber as it rolls over the ground, eliminating smoke or the risk that a fire might spread. The company s tech makes it possible to carry out a prescribed burn even in the middle of California s fire season. Typically, the process would only happen during a limited window of time in the spring. The machines can also be used near homes or other infrastructure.