Smart Water Pumping System with IoT Monitoring and Metering

This paper presents the design and implementation of a smart water pumping system with integrated IoT monitoring and metering capability. Water management scheme has led to collapse of many governments owned water corporations. IoT can be used to improve water management system. In this work, a smart water pumping system that pumps water automatically, computes the volume and equivalent price while transmitting the same to a cloud-based resource is developed. In the methodology, ultrasonic sensor interfaced to ATmega328 microcontroller is used as an input sensor that measures the water level. A DC pump interfaced to the controller using a relay as a driver is used to pump water from the underground reservoir to the overhead tank. A closed loop control algorithm for automation of the system was developed using embedded C, hybrid assembly, C and C++ languages. Arduino Integrated Development Environment was used to develop the code for implementation of the flowchart for the control algorithm. The entire system was integrated with an (Internet of Things) IoT gateway SIM808 which transmits selected parameters of the system to the cloud. Specifically, the volume of water and associated price calculated using a mathematical model developed in the work are transmitted to a cloud resource, Thing Speak server. Simulation results showed that the system design worked as expected even as the proof-of-concept prototype demonstrated that the concept of this work can be implemented. The result of this work is recommended for individuals that would want to get into commercialization of water distribution, as well as government agencies that would want to adopt IoT management system for Wide Area Water distribution (WAW).