Industrial-Based GSM Water Leakage Detection, Monitoring and Controlling System: A case of North Rift Valley Water Agency in Kenya

Abstract

The current system for detecting and monitoring water leaks in Kenyan industries is manual and costly. Despite emerging new technological trends, many industries lack automated systems to detect, monitor, and control water leakage due to the high cost of maintenance and installation. This study's objective was to develop an automatic, remote, and real-time detection, monitoring, and, control system for water leaks. The system is made up of two nodes, one at the source and one at the destination or tap. The two nodes are made up of an ESP microcontroller, which is used to control all the connected components. The use of the ESP 32 microcontroller was efficient due to its ability to provide WI-FI. Aside from the solenoid valve, which was used to turn the water flow on or off in the event of leaks, the system also includes the FY-201 water flow sensor, which was used to gauge the amount of water flowing through the pipe. Water leakage is detected when the volume of water passing through the two sensors differs in terms of volume, indicating that a water leakage has just occurred. Thing-Board, an IoT-based platform used to monitor and visualize data from various devices connected, was used for real-time monitoring, visualization, and control. The developed system was tested with different water service providers, and the results showed that the system responds positively to water leakage parameters with capability of monitoring water leakages in a real time.