mmiriX

We're not doing something entirely new, we are just proffering better ways for you to manage water at home.

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Inspiration

Growing up in Nsukka Nigeria has exposed me to series of experiences - both good and bad ones. A Particular re-occurring experience which had bothered me had been how water was managed in my lodge, as a student. As a mechatronics engineering student, i thought of a better way we could manage water distribution and usage in my lodge and also how the process could be applied to other homes facing the same problem.

What it does

This system we built does 2 key operations ( even more by consequence) :

  • automate an entire water pumping process (without the need for human assistance)
  • intelligently manage how residents use water by allocating certain amount of water ( per day or week as the case may be) - this is done to instill a mindset of management in them.

How it works: when our system is installed and functional, water is pumped upstream to two tanks and the system (with sensors and microcontrollers) intelligently switches off the pumping process when the water level is full. when the water level gets low again, the system automatically triggers the pump on and the cycle repeats itself - you could say this system runs infinitely.

We also built a web application that displays real-time analysis of a users' water usage rate. this helps to keep track of how much is used in a certain time. We then built an algorithm that sets a threshold of the amount of water to be used per day - to help users grow a good water usage ethic. We also set an OverrideSwitch in the web app to allow users break the algorithm to increase their usage limit - only in terms of an emergency situation.

How we built it

We built this product with our idea and knowledge of how sensors, actuators and microcontrollers work. By integrating web application technologies, mechanical systems, electrical systems and control system - we were able to come up with a wholistic assembly of our product

Challenges we ran into

We faced mechanical issues. when the water level in the tank was full, water gradually flowed back through the valves to the pump - due to pressure head. This was a problem for us. We look forward to using better pipe and valve design to solve this problem

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I would say, what excites us the most about this project is that, even though a prototype, it works as intended - according to what we planned during conceptual design - from the mechanical, electrical and control system.

What we learned

We got to understand better, wireless communication principle of how hardware sensors communicated seamlessly with a software interface. And lots more we learned that we cannot really document here

What's next for mmiriX

The next step is that Mechatronics Club UNN aims to make it to the final stage of this competition and to receive not just funding, but better expertise from industrial experts on how to scale this solution to be useful to the society

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