We are proud to be the smart IoT electronics partner in the Elon Musk Foundation funded project to install 150 smart water drinking fountains in Flint Michigan schools. A stack is embedded inside a water drinking fountain by our OEM partner. Sensors for water flow and water quality are connected to inputs on the embedded stack. Two outputs control water valves for directing water to the water sensing area and to shut off the main valve if poor water quality or a water leak is detected. Sensors are sampled every second and the data is sent to a cloud dashboard for real-time monitoring. Software inside the stack uses algorithms for sensor processing and water leak detection. Real time information on drinking fountain usage also helps optimize maintenance costs. This is a great example of adding smart IoT features to previously “dumb”, unconnected OEM products. We have many on-going projects that follow this pattern, although none can match the tremendous societal impact of water quality for our children.
While the press coverage of the Flint MI water crisis comes and goes, the problem is not magically going away any time soon and affects all of us, not just Flint. See Pennsylvania Gets an F for not addressing lead in school drinking water
Here is a major National Geographic article on water quality. Five years on, the Flint water crisis is nowhere near over
This is one of many links to press coverage of the Elon Musk Foundation donation. Elon Musk’s $480,000 donation to Flint public schools will help provide students clean drinking water
We say a lot around here that the biggest limitation to IoT adoption is a lack of imagination and ambition in the world. We congratulate our OEM, system integrator, and foundation partners in overcoming this limitation with flying colors!