Smart Water Network Management

 

With increasing concern for water scarcity and growing demand for environmentally sustainable practices, it’s good to remember that even small improvements in water consumption can make a big impact over time.

But to achieve those incremental savings and in order to make sure that your water saving techniques has the favorable effects, you’ll need to improve the accuracy of monitoring by deep dive into the technology you are using.

In addition to the cost effective solutions & saving in consumption, accurate and frequent water measurement techniques also helps you catch and monitor all the possible total flow and leaks before they severely affects the building.

Different magnetic sensors such as reed switches or hall effect sensors are used to detect and assess the magnet rotation, extra electronics generates a voltage pulse proportional to the water flow. In this way it reflects and captures the water consumed.

Different types of water meter are being used for different purposes as follows:

 

Sr.No.	Pulse Based Output Water Meter (Magnetic)	Ultrasonic Water Meter	Electromagnetic Water Meter
1.	Automatic Water Meter Reading on hourly basis	Automatic Water Meter Reading in real time monitoring	Automatic Water Meter Reading in real time monitoring
2.	Moving parts with a reed switch	Static Meters	Static Meters
3.	Volume of water determined using Pulse	Radiation/Signal based readings	Electromagnetic induction based reading
4.	Insensitive to Temperature, Pressure & Viscosity	Sensitive to Solid suspended particles & air bubbles	Unaffected by the temperature, pressure, density, or viscosity of the liquid

In  order  to transmit the water  meter  data between  meter  and  the users, the system  uses the  LoRa  trans receiver  module which is the AMR unit. The Automatic Water Meter eliminates the hassles & errors in case of Manual Readings Systems. In India, mostly conventional mechanical reading meters are being used, a person needs to go to every meter to note down the reading and then he prepares the bill.

 The AMR has multiple of features to beat the conventional system, which are as follows:

• Easy to use and deploy

• Tamper alert

• Long range wireless data transmission

• Removal detection

• Low Maintenance cost

• Configurable data frequency time

The  final reading  is  thus  sent  wirelessly  from AMR using  LoRa  transmitter  module which  is  at both  the  transmitter  as  well  as  LoRaWAN Hand-Held unit or Static LoRaWAN Gateway.  The Hand-Held unit & Gateway comprising of LoRa module both can cover the distance of up to 2km in urban area and up to 5km when line of sight.

As per the LoRaWAN architecture, the encrypted data then sends to the LoRa Network Server.

A user can also monitor & control the consumption through either Web based or Mobile based Application. The Application has following features:

1.       Multi-Level Accounts/Logins.
2.        History Tracking through Downloadable Reports.
3.        Recharge System: Prepaid or Postpaid both.
4.      User Registration with Flat Numbers/Ids.