BrainDrain

BrainDrain is a connected drain cover that predicts and prevents blockages and flooding in street and road drains

Comment 2

Inspiration

The average cost of unblocking a drain once a problem has occurred is £150-£200. (Source: PriceYourJob.co.uk). That’s before it causes a road flood.

Road floods have a domino effect.

  • They’re dangerous for road users and pedestrians.
  • Damage is caused to the road, pavements and verges.
  • Emergency services can be impeded.
  • Smaller communities become isolated.
  • Road Markings are obscured.
  • Buildings can be damaged.

What it does

BrainDrain can detect when the level of debris is rising over a period of time and can tell if rain has failed to move the build-up.

We can present this data on a map highlighting areas where a road flood is likely to occur soon.

We can even build a schedule of maintenance automatically based on the data.

How we built it

We got a pizza box and a stapler.

Then we got a SODAQ ExpLoRer dev board to talk to The Things Network using custom Arduino firmware. We attached a proximity sensor and got the payload decoded.

Then we setup an HTTP integration to Firebase in the form of a Cloud Function, which stores the payload in a real-time Firestore database.

Lastly, we got a Firebase front-end to subscribe to the real-time Firestore database and update a graph and status display based on recent data coming in from the device.

The entire path is event-driven and takes a second to travel from the device to a client, then an additional second to render the graph.

Challenges we ran into

Lack of adhesive and learning Firebase's architecture.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We found a stapler and managed to travel half the planet in a couple of seconds.

What we learned

More about the SODAQ and The Things Network ecosystem for LoRa.

Advantages/disadvantages for Google's managed ecosystem.

What's next for BrainDrain

Seed funding would need to be acquired to further develop the prototype and take the device to production. This work would include development of production ready electronics and enclosures, and the development of robust scalable software.

In addition to the technical development, marketing efforts would need to be made to get interested from infrastructure owners and maintenance companies. The aim of this would be to arrange an initial study with a few hundred sensors in a problematic geographic area.

Share this project:

Updates