The Internet of Things (IoT) technology can assist in the effective conservation of resources and energy management. With IoT, managing water level and detecting leakage within water pipeline distribution system can be automated. This is the golden opportunity as the field of water management and distribution progress with the advancement of IoT.

Water shortage has been part of the crucial complications that encountered by many municipalities around the globe and surplus during transmission has been acknowledged as the main problem.

Thus, the key idea for this project is to design a real-time low-cost wireless system called as SMART2L to prevent Non-Revenue Water (NRW) commonly known as unbilled water wastage. SMART2L integrates Internet of Things (IoT) technologies using FAVORIOT platform that will make a change to the way of people live and manage their water resources smartly.

[Note: This project is being done by UNITEN, our FAVORIOT’s University collaborator. Article was written by Haikal Hafiz Kadar]

You can check out the whole LIST of IOT PROJECTS by our University Collaborators.

This article is contributed by Fazira Ridzuan, FAVORIOT’s IoT Apprentice. She joined FAVORIOT in Oct. 2017. Much has been discussed through the eyes of the industry people and the academicians. It’s about time to hear from the students’ perspectives. This is an honest view and we should listen, admit if there are weaknesses and take action to make it better.

Introduction

I was a student a few months back. And this question popped up in my mind a few hours ago. Why not many students willing to take IoT as their Final Year Project (FYP)? After chatting with my ex-course mate, these are our thoughts regarding the above question.

Exposure

1. Not many lecturers specialized in IoT. Lecturer mostly specialized in established computer sciences field than the newfound or emerging field such as IoT.
2. Does guidance matter? I would say, yes. Since the number of tutors (lecturer and tutor) available to teach the IoT course are very limited despite the number of the student are large. Thus, the core understanding of the IoT course might be very inadequate.
3. When there’s no exposure, the knowledge won’t be fully understood. Some university is focusing on their student in mastering the computer programming languages. And mostly, students are required to self-explore.
4. In addition, student has the least info on how to get their hands on of the IoT equipment
5. Although universities have encouraged the growth of the IoT field, with the university budget being cut out affect the required significant cost expends especially in obtaining the IoT’s equipment. Thus, might be given less focus for the IoT fund in university.

Interest

1. Choosing FYP project is a very important decision. Typically, the student will choose the project that they have the most confident on as they might have some idea or experience that related to the FYP project. With the little IoT field exposure to the student, the chances for student to select the FYP project that involve IoT might be very low as they might have found it risky since they don’t know much about IoT.
2. Mindset: Time flies really fast without we are noticing it, and without a good vision and long-term planning on the expected timeline to complete the project, the student might be running out of time.
   • It is kind of cumbersome for them to grab all in once from scratch within limited of time. Most students are interested to do things that already there rather than creating the not-there-yet. Implementing and developing the new product requires more time. Deciding to do an FYP project does require a critical thinking on time and financial management. Moreover, apart from FYP, student need to go for a few other courses during the semester and a few other assignment and exam to be completed. These factors influence the student’s grade and performance. Doing an IoT based project required a huge commitment and discipline. Without discipline, a low-quality report which done in a short range of time is worthless. Having a clear picture of doing the IoT project without an external interruption might solve this issue. Some panel request many things which cause student to lose their interest in completing the project, making them build an application that fulfills the panel requirement rather than solving the real-world problem.
3. Back to the exposure in IoT, less knowledge in IoT will influence student’s thought regarding the project value for future uses. They might not see the potential for their IoT prototype or product to be in industry or commercialize. They don’t find any platform that can enhance their interest, talent and what contribution can be made via it. Most IoT products are for future use. Where the inventor of IoT product need strong support to make the ideas get real.
4. Some student that takes the IoT project is not familiar with the IoT concept. They might not well-explained with the basic components such as client, middleware, server and the data passing and interaction between the process. They might not be knowing where to start, what the needing and how-to setup the environment.
5. Some other factor is lack of basic knowledge in electronics and engineering field. This basic knowledge is very crucial as it might become such a great burden to the student that facing simple electronic faulty configuration if they don’t have the basic knowledge.

Therefore, we should let university and student look at the industry.

1. Encourage the student to do IoT as there is a great opportunity for them as IoT is the popular global focus else than big data. Good at IoT open chances for them to go abroad for future career life.
2. Industry must work together with the university, knowing why a student doesn’t choose IoT and get the reasoning from their perspective not only from the lecturer. IoT has been the big player in these few years and upcoming years, means everyone is already in IoT era without them realizing it.
3. IoT field currently grows very fast. Although there are a lot of things that had been done with IoT. There is still numerous unknown potential on the IoT field waiting to be discovered. With a greater exposure of IoT field in the university side, IoT field will be able to grow further to its full potential and give greater impact to the society beyond anyone could ever imagine.

Internet of Things (IoT) is a global network of smart devices that can be sensed and interacted with the environment using the internet as a platform for the communication and interaction with other users and systems. The main concept behind every IoT technology and its implementation is “Devices are integrated with the virtual world of internet and interact with it by tracking, sensing and monitoring objects and their environment”.  It also can collect and transmit data, actuate devices based on triggers and receive information.

Water is one of the most important substances for people on earth. Nowadays, people demand something that can influence their daily lifestyle, in a good way. Lots of people do not realize the importance of water because water is a limited resource, but useful in industry and agriculture. By using water monitoring system water wastage can be avoided. Since the water leakage cannot be detected automatically, some of the people do not make a fuss about the problem at all. Thus, the bill of water consumption will increase and this system will help to save cost on the bill, by detecting the leakage of the water at certain points in a pipeline.

Most of the people are unaware of the leakage of water which has been occurred in their environment. Therefore water leakage monitoring system is proposed. Water leakage at certain points can be detected by monitoring flow of water in the pipeline by using Water Flow Sensor. In addition, the amount of water that has been wasted due to the unattended water consumption can be reduced. In order to detect water leakage in the pipeline, the pressure of water will be measured by using the water flow sensor. Once the pressure level is detected,  the LCD will display the current water flow rate and the GSM will notify the user about the­­ leakage.

Flowchart

This project is conducted based on the flow chart shown in figure 1. In the first stage, water will go through the water flow sensor and can monitor the water flow by using the Favoriot platform. The LCD will display also the water flow rate.

When the water flow rate more than 10 L/min for a certain time without no one use it to show that the water is leakage. After it detects the leakage occurs at the pipeline, the GSM will notify the user about the leakage.

Design Project

The design part of this project, it explained about the process of the monitoring water leakage.

Figure 2 shows the concept that will be used in this project. The water from the tank will flow the water to every junction pipeline. And every junction will place the water flow sensor to monitor the flow rate of the water. When the water flow rate increase more than a threshold that was set up, that is mean there is some part is leaking in the pipeline. For monitoring part, Favoriot will monitor the graph of the flow rate water and LCD will show the flow rate value for every second.

[Note: This project is being done by UTHM, our FAVORIOT’s University’s collaborator. Article was written by Mohd Amir Ariff Anuar, FKEE UTHM]

You can check out the whole LIST of IOT PROJECTS by our University Collaborators.