Terminus Aqua

Develop, but sustainably!

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The Why's, the Whence's and the Eureka Moment

"Security does not only consist of safeguarding the present, But also to protect the future!"

... and in the future, it is said, that major wars would break out on the issue of ... water! This extremely vital elixir of nature is what needs security the most today.

Our inspiration basically stemmed from these headlines in a famous international newspaper:

At the same time, 19th June 2019 was declared as the Day Zero in Chennai (a major Indian metropolitan. Yes, we are not looking 50 years into the future, day Zero is already history.

The What's

Our solution is based on the philosophy of prevention. Our aim is to prevent the water from even filling up to the brim. What this means, is that as soon as the water level passes a certain maximum limit set by the user, our machine will turn the tap off, thereby preventing any water loss.

  1. When the machine is first turned on, it calculates the distance between itself and the ground, using a default value for the bottle height (which can be changed later on by the user).
  2. After configuring the surface-sensor distance, the sensor gives a beep. This means, that the user can now place the bottle. Again the sensor calculates the height from the bottle brim to the sensor and stores it as a constant.
  3. The loop will stop running when the current height of water surface, calculated from the sensor, becomes less than or equal to the height of the brim of the bottle. Also, if the user wants, he can specify a safety factor, which will stop the water even before it touches the brim, minimizing the water loss by spilling or splashing or other causes.

The How's

This project was solely built using electric engineering (turns out it's not at all easy as it appears 😖) and Arduino Nano along with various forms of sensors (ultrasound) and solenoid valve.

The Challenges

This was our first time with electrical, and, to be honest, we struggled 😓😓. We faced all sorts of trouble - first, the solenoid valve started problem-making. As soon as it worked, the ultrasound betrayed us. When the ultrasound started (at the last minute), the Arduino software threw an unexpected error ('unexpected' as nobody over the stack exchange community even replied to us 😔)

The Accomplishments

Successfully running a complex electrical circuit and completing the project despite a mass blackout in our region.

The Lessons

Pretty much everything electrical and Arduino stuff.

The Further Plans

We plan to further add Machine Learning into the project so that the project adapts to the user's need all by itself, using TensorFlow Lite. Eventually, we also plan to patent our project and commercialize it in the (not-too) distant future.

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