Water Usage Metric Provider (WUMP)

A smart tracker for water usage that provide metrics for something as small as a shower to something as large as an entire city.

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Things used in this project

Hardware components

Hacked up Water flow sensor

We hooked up magnetic sensor with ADC module of Intel Xeon processor to calculate the water usage.

Software apps and online services

PGADMIN3

DATABASE MANAGEMENT

Amazon Web Services AWS EC2

SERVER IS RUNNING ON AWS EC2

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Soldering iron (generic)

We used soldering iron to solder the jumper wires with the Intel Xeon processor and with the magnetic sensor

Story

The motivation behind the project

The motivation behind this project comes from the shortage of water and high costs of water bills in San Francisco. We started studying data about water usage in California Households.

We all like to save money; and one of the easiest ways to reduce your water bill in San Francisco is to apply for a meter. You could be amazed by how much water and money you can save by making a few small changes to your daily routine.

The average indoor usage in gallons per household per day in California is 174.31. The purpose of this project is to collect the water used in a house or apartment while storing the usage in a database.

Our motto is, "A quarter of your energy bill comes from heating water. By saving a few liters each day, you can reduce your energy bills, your water bill (if on a meter) and help the environment."

The App

Here are the images of our IOS app working in real time. We built the IOS app in less than 24 hours.

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Technologies Used

The Front End of the project is built using IOS

The Back End of the project is built using Node.js

For Hardware development we are using Intel Xeon Processor and ADC Sensor

A hacked up Off-the-shelf dumb Water flow meter

The sensor collects the water usage information and sends it to the Intel processor that converts voltage to digital value . We are connecting Intel Xeon processor with our magnetic sensor using Jumper wires

Intel Edison Code

//Import the mraa library for intel Edison board
var mraa = require("mraa") ;
//Using node-rest-client npm package for sending data to the AWS backend
var Client = require('node-rest-client').Client;

var client = new Client();

//helper sleep function
var sleep = function(milliseconds) {
  var start = new Date().getTime();
  for (var i = 0; i < 1e7; i++) {
    if ((new Date().getTime() - start) > milliseconds){
      break;
    }
  }
};

console.log('MRAA Version: ' + mraa.getVersion()); //write the mraa version to the console

//Initialize analog pin A0
var analogPin0 = new mraa.Aio(0);

//flags for measuring the water flow
validMeasurementCounts = 0;
count_so_far = 0.0;
valid_measurement = false;
value_incremented = false;


while(true)
{
    //measure the voltage across the hall efect sensor on the hackedup water flow meter
    var analogValue = analogPin0.read(); //read the value of the analog pin

    console.log("Water sensor value:" + analogValue); //write the value of the analog pin to the console

    //Below block of code is relevant to the hacked up water flow meter,
    //it should be different for each  water flow meter
    //Logic to calibrate and ignore erroneous measurements  //
    if(analogValue > 700)                                   //
    {                                                       //
        validMeasurementCounts++;                           //
    }                                                       //
                                                            //
    if(analogValue < 100)                                   //
    {                                                       //
        value_incremented = true;                           //
    }                                                       //
                                                            //
    if((validMeasurementCounts > 5) && value_incremented)   //
    {                                                       //
        valid_measurement = true;                           //
        validMeasurementCounts = 0;                         //
    }                                                       //
    //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

    if(valid_measurement)
    {
        //resetting the flags
        valid_measurement = false;
        value_incremented = false;
        count_so_far += 0.1;

        //creating the post request args
        var args = {
            data: {
                serialNumber: "firstDevice",        //should be the serial id of the device
                amount: 0.1                         //should be double value of water flow incremental value
            },
            headers: {
                "Content-Type": "application/json"
            }
        };

        //Executing the post request to the AWS backend
        client.post("http://ec2-54-84-48-230.compute-1.amazonaws.com/api/v1/device/transaction", args, function (data, response) {
            // parsed response body logging
            console.log(data);
        });

        //local debugging logging
        console.log("Water usage so far:" + count_so_far + " gallons");
    }

    sleep(200); //sleep 200ms
}

Water Usage Metric Provider (WUMP)