EcoArt Intent—FrankS
This project is designed to allow homeowners to record and understand how much water they really use each day and in which area of their home. On average a person will use 80 – 100 gallons of water each day. This includes everything from doing the dishes to washing our hands. Water is taken from local rivers and lakes and purified at plants then distributed to homes and other facilities. If we use to much water than the resource could become thing and potential harm the environment. The treatment procedure also takes up energy as well as heating the water from showers and cleaning dishes. Limiting our water use can be beneficial to the environment and the community.
The way that this project would work is by using Arduino’s and a fluid rate sensor we can record the amount of water that is being used based on the gallon. Each sensor would be put on a water pipe that leads to a certain room in the house. The way water piping is made in homes is pretty simple. There are pipes that run cold water and there are pipes that run hot water. An Arduino would be placed on both the hot water and cold water pipes so that they can get and accurate reading of both hot water usage and cold water usage. Each would cost around $45 to make if I use an Arduino Uno is used for all of the sensors. Depending on how many water appliances a person has this could get extremely costly. If I where to hook up an entire house I would need to use other computers to do so that would eliminate the cost. The sensor that I could make as a prototype would use the materials listed below. I would also need to code the program and that could possibly take around 20 hours depending on how much I would need to learn about Bluetooth sensors. I would also need to create an interface for the program, which could another 20 hours roughly. My overall estimate for time would be around 45 hours of assembly and development but this could very well increase or decrease.
Materials
- Fluid rate sensor $10
- Arduino $25
- Bluetooth sensor $5
- 9V Battery $5
One thought on “EcoArt Intent—FrankS”
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This is an interesting project, and I am curious to see how you are able to record all your water usage. This setup looks like it would only be for one location/tap. How would you record the water you use for showering or flushing? Is this something that you would carry with you or will you limit your water usage to only one tap?
Perhaps what you could do is install this at the one sink you use the most. Then with your application, record the amount of time you leave the water running. Many taps, toilets have markings on them that tell the maximum water flow. Usually marked in terms of Gallons per flush (GPF, or if in liters LPF). For taps you may see markings where the water exits the faucet with gallons per second or minute. This may be appropriate for showers and the sort.
I also would be interested to see if you can find a way to track how much water you consume, versus water that you let go down the drain right after using. I’m not sure if you might need another sensor for the drain, or if you measure out what you have used compared to your rate of usage per session.
Concept
Using Physical computing and Mobile programming
This is really focused on making the self-aware. Would this be part of a larger project where you build and distribute these so that anyone can track their usage?
new media strategies?
Design
I feel that this is clearly thought out, but there are some technical details that may have to be addressed, see above.
Audience
The audience looks mostly to for the self. Anyone who wishes to modify behavior with feedback to their actions
Creativity
I think this is a creative way of tracking usage without having to laboriously track out all usages. However, there are many sources of water, and keeping track of them all may be difficult.