In collaboration with Swisscom, the goal of this iPOLE project was to invent, prototype, explore, and demonstrate applications of sensors and machine-to-machine communication. As we were based in Zurich and Zurich has more fountains than any other city in the entire world. We came up with the idea of Waterbuoy. Waterbuoy is an autonomous monitoring system that can be implemented into any natural or man made volumes of water. Simply place the device in the water. And Waterbury will monitor the levels of the water, whilst also measuring the health conditions, needed to keep it safe and drinkable.
Waterbury can be remotely monitored through its own LPN, the data is sent to a control room where it is translated in to an easily readable structure. From this dashboard you will be able to organise the maintenance teams day, pinpointing which fountains in the city need cleaning or fixing first. with over 1600 fountains in the city it can be hard to keep track of which need looking after the most.
The dashboard has also been created to work mobile, so the maintenance technicians can keep a track of what work they have to do and also if there are any urgent jobs need doing the will get a push notification through to alert them. On the device they will be able to see all the previous work been done of the fountains so they can figure out the best course of action when it come to fix it quickly and efficiently.
The device itself would be anchored to the bottom of the fountain, with a colourful little float attached to the top. The float would track the water levels, and also send the data to the LPN as signal doesn’t travel well through water. Underneath the surface is where the device would track the vital water signs using both Turbidity Sensors and a pH sensor.
