ECE 110/120 Honors Lab Section : Smart Sink

Edgar Martinez-emart69-ECE 120

Jesse Herr- jjherr2 ECE 110 

Anisha Gubba – agubba2 ECE120

Tianming — tc22 ECE120

1. Introduction 

a. Statement of Purpose:

The role of the Smart Sink is to provide a convenient way to access information about a faucet’s water usage. Information about the amount of water used per month will be given as well, in the form of a downloadable app. This product will allow people to efficiently and easily manage their faucet’s water output and adjust their behavior accordingly, and therefore proactively reduce their water usage. The Smart Sink will be able to connect to a wide variety of household sink faucets and will measure both the rate of water flow coming from a sink as well as the total amount of water used.

b. Background Research

Some research our group has done is finding out the average amount of water that a U.S. household uses on a daily basis and the average size of a faucet. What drives our group to come up with this project is to combat the issue that water waste is one of the largest problems in the modern world. While millions of people lack access to clean water, many first world countries let excessive amounts of water go to waste and with the Smart Sink, this issue can be combated. Our current project is different from any previous projects as it combats a real-world issue.

     2. Design Details

a. Block Diagram/ flow Chart

b. System overview 

The battery supplies power to our Arduino board which then connects to the flowmeter, relaying information to the Arduino through the pin attachment it comes with. The information is then sent to the mobile app on the user's device via bluetooth. This whole system is connected to the actual sink via a sink attachment.

     3. Parts:

4. Possible Challenges:

1. Issue with the coding aspect of the project of it will be too advanced for our knowledge
2. If the flow meter is not accurate enough 
3. If the budget will be enough for the Smart Sinks
4. How we will be able to create a hub of Smart Sink to a single app

5. References 

[1]"Cactus | Stryker", Stryker.com, 2019. [Online]. Available: https://www.stryker.com/us/en/surgical/products/cactus-controlled-substance-waste-management-system/cactus.html. [Accessed: 04- Oct- 2019]

[2]U. Howard Perlman, "Drip calculator: How much water does a leaking faucet waste? USGS Water Science School", Water.usgs.gov, 2019. [Online]. Available: https://water.usgs.gov/edu/activity-drip.html. [Accessed: 04- Oct- 2019]

[3]"The incredibly stupid way that Americans waste 1 trillion gallons of water each year", The incredibly stupid way that Americans waste 1 trillion gallons of water each year - The Washington Post, 2019. [Online]. Available: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/03/17/the-incredibly-stupid-way-that-america-wastes-1-trillion-gallons-of-water-each-year/. [Accessed: 04- Oct- 2019]