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PipeMate

Made by Ashutosh Sharma · UNLISTED (SHOWN IN POOLS)

In both my house on campus and family home, monitoring water usage has always been a bit of a mystery. In many cases at home, my mom has received huge water bills on months even when we were on vacation. This problem was usually resolved by having a plumber or other specialist take a look at our pipes, but the costs were an avoidable nuisance. Using an IoT enabled Pipe Leakage Meter, my project will aim to solve this problem by providing by the minute info about pipe flow to connected devices.

Created: January 25th, 2018

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Goals

The solution that I present uses the Particle Photon to detect a leak, and then flash an LED and send an email accordingly. This solution uses a moisture sensor to detect water on the floor.

Process

With the help of 4 jumper cables, 2 resistors, an LED pin and moisture sensor connected to the Photon, I was able to create an alert for high moisture content. But before I got to this final configuration, many revisions were needed. At the start, my plan was to use a flow sensor to get realtime data from a water source, but switched to the moisture sensor for feasibility purposes. Afterwards, I spent time trying to get the sensor working. This required the online tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm83L104naY. Once this was understood, I hooked in jumpers and went to particle Hub to see what moisture readings I would get. I realized that I needed analog input for this endeavor to work, but initially had trouble. However, once I hooked the resistor associated with the analog input to the cathode row, I got readings between 2000 and 4000, where below ~3400 meant that the sensor was under 0.5 inches of water. So, my code reflects the 3400 value as lowVal and allowed me to set an LED flicker and email alert once this threshold was reached.

Outcome

1. Particle Photon

2. 4 male-female Jumper Cables, 2 resistors

3. LED Pin

4. Flying Fish Moisture sensor

5. 2 female to female jumpers

6. 15mL cup of water

Reflection

This project was a great test of introductory Particle Photon concepts. I was really proud of how the sensor, LED Pin and Email notification integrated seamlessly. In the future, I'll plan to complete this project with a flow sensor to allow for a more accurate real life application.

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int sensorValue = 0;
int lowVal = 3400;
int ledPin = D0;

void setup() {
  // Put initialization like pinMode and begin functions here.
Particle.variable("sensorValue", sensorValue);
Serial.begin(9600);
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
}

void loop() {

  digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
sensorValue = analogRead(A0);
//Serial.println(sensorValue);
if(sensorValue <= lowVal){
  //do Something
Particle.publish("Moisture", "HIGH");
digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
delay(100);
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
delay(100);
//lowVal = sensorValue;
}

delay(100);
}
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PipeMate
Ashutosh Sharma - https://youtu.be/377Ur8xaVuE
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Courses

49313 Designing for the Internet of Things (Undergrad)

· 22 members

A hands-on introductory course exploring the Internet of Things and connected product experiences.

About

In both my house on campus and family home, monitoring water usage has always been a bit of a mystery. In many cases at home, my mom has received huge water bills on months even when we were on vacation. This problem was usually resolved by having a plumber or other specialist take a look at our pipes, but the costs were an avoidable nuisance. Using an IoT enabled Pipe Leakage Meter, my project will aim to solve this problem by providing by the minute info about pipe flow to connected devices.