H2KNOW

How much water do you use? It's time for you to H2KNOW!

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*Provide insight into home water usage to motivate consumers to conserve water consumption. *

Inspiration

We wanted to find ways in conserving water. Through quick searches, we found most water consumption in the US comes from the agriculture industry.

To get some guidance, we roamed through the EarthX conference. We spoke with non-profit organizations, private companies, farmers, and municipal organizations. After meeting and getting informed perspective, we shifted from industrial to consumer residential as our target market. The average Texas resident uses a little above 200 gallons of water per day. Water irrigation systems and sprinkler systems can use up to 1,860 gallons a day.

What it does

Our user, essentially a homeowner, can view their water usage in gallons over the course of week, months, year, and even live data.

To install, user needs a smart hub and sensors for water exit points. The Smart Hub relays data between server and sensor. Sensors are placed in areas like kitchen sink, sprinkler system, bathroom sinks, laundry washer, and toilets, for example.

How I built it

Hardware:
RaspberryPi BLE

Front-end: VueJS and TypeScript

Back-end: Microsoft Azure Machine Learning

*Using data from following sources: *
EPA Watersense - water usage in households
Texas Drought Map - Texas drought areas help users know if drought is nearing
Texas Water Department Board - Texas specific
How Water Works - Water use, efficiency, and savings

Target Market

Residential home owners, extended to all who pay a water bill (including Commercial Usage - Service Industry, Business Owners). Dashboard will be provided by the water company, user will purchase the device and install themselves. _ Average cost $50/hub, $15/sensor _

Challenges I ran into

Narrowing down the project from industry to consumer

Using US drought monitor website

Proper hardware for the hack

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Building a highly applicable tool in raising awareness of water consumption to a user who would be oblivious of their water usage and drought warnings

Working with highly knowledgeable peers that motivate us to push our technical comfort zones

What I learned

While industrial water consumption is the highest percentage in the US, the primary challenge faced in the industry is financial funding - the industry users are well aware of their consumption and do not cause as drastic of water waste as consumers.

Consumers, however, are at higher levels of risk in water waste. There is a lot of room to improve the way water is consumed by non-industry users and raise awareness in the critical areas where wasted water can be significantly reduced.

What's next for H2KNOW

Working with municipalities and water companies to implement employee incentive programs

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