Remote Water Pump Monitoring

Funded by an Innovation Partnership feasibility grant the WiSAR Technology Gateway investigated the state of the art in water well management. Competitor products were researched, and a product requirements specification developed for the India Mark II pump commonly used in Africa. Methods to detect and measure waterflow were investigated and a solution proposed for further development. Of critical importance is for the sensor to be connected to the cloud and powered by a battery with a multi-year lifetime. To this end low-power wide area communications was selected as the communication technology with the module power supply to be enhanced by energy harvesting such as a solar panel or energy scavenging from movement of the pump handle. The technical part of the project concluded with a recommended solution to be developed and deployed under an Innovation Partnership.

The parties used the results of the project to set up a consortium of companies to improve the reliability of hand pump boreholes in Uganda through remote monitoring and remote management. The Smart Water consortium includes Letterkenny IT, Fields of Life, Analog Devices, ARUP Global Challenge fund, CW Applied Technology, VT Networks and Kumi local government in Uganda. Human based design underpins the project approach, ensuring that local communities in Uganda are central to and involved in the system design leading to increased community capacity and ensuring real benefits for the communities. The water monitoring and condition monitoring solutions to be deployed in the handpumps are being developed under an Innovation Partnership lead by Martin Bradley, lecturer in electronics at Letterkenny IT, in collaboration with the WiSAR Technology Gateway. The device will be the first implementation of the Sigfox low power wide area network in Uganda.