“System that monitors a tap with the goal to detect wheter there is a leak of water and in case of leak notify it through an acoustic signal.
Introduction
Nowadays, the problem of wasting water is a very big problem and water is starting to become a scarce commodity.
In the European Union, more than half of the population lives in communities of more than 150, 000 population equivalent (PE), generating a daily amount of 41.5 million m3 of wastewater. For that reason one, of the big challenges for smart cities of the future is to reduce the waste of water in urban areas.
The system proposed here aims to detect a leak of water in a tap and alert someone nearby via an acoustic signal who can then close the tap and stop the leak.
The system monitors the water flowing out of the tap by means of a water flow sensor and movement is detected in front of the tap via the PIR sensor. If water is measured flowing through the tap, but no movement is detected in front of it, the system determines that there is a leak and a buzzer is activated. In order to turn off the buzzer, the leak must be stopped by closing the tap.
The physical device is composed of:
- Board Nucleo-F446ZE: This is the main board of the device. It is connected with the breadboard and reads the data collected by the two sensors.
- PIR HC-SR501: The role of this sensor is to detect any movement near the tap. It is connected to the adc input pin A1 of the nucleo board.
- Water Flow Sensor: This sensor detects whether water is flowing out of the tap. It is connected to the adc input pin Ao of the nucleo board.
- Active buzzer: Activated when a leak is detected. Connected to the out pin D2 of the nucleo board.
- Generic Led: Always on to notify that the system is working.”