PROJECT TITAN WATER HERO - SMART WATER METER: PRODUCTION UNIT DEPLOYED
On November 07, 2017 I received the final production sample of the Water Hero system. I had a few false starts on the controller due to poor QA but that has all been sorted out today. There are still some pending items that need to be addressed but for what I am doing right now the system works fine.
Below is the little shipping box that arrived from America to Canada.
Enclosed in this specific parcel was the main controller and power supply. Normally you would receive both those items along with a paper manual, water sensor, CAT5e, and a Water Hero bracelet. All of that came prior during the false start so I'll show case each item below.
The main Water Hero controller which looks completely different than previous generation of hardware. This one is white with rounded corners vs the blue which looked just like a square box.
The front of the unit has from left to right the 5 VDC power input. RJ45 port to connect to the water meter sensor, the next port is to connect to the automated shut off valve, next is the I/O ports for future use like connecting to a security alarm system.
Lastly, is the pulse outputs to connect to the GEM.
The side of the housing is very hard to tell are three clear option buttons. Next to them are three multi colored LED's to indicate status of battery, WiFi, programming, errors, etc.
I powered up the controller so the forum members could see the LED's on the far right. As noted up above the description offers very little insight. As they say, a photo offers a thousand words!
The water meter sensor that attaches to the water line meter. This was a prototype so please ignore the rough condition its in. The device is extremely easy to install you literally just place it around the water meter and secure the Velcro strap.
This part was fabricated using 3D modeling so its a little rough.
But expect to see the final injected molded units to be of much finer quality.
The handle is where you insert the other end of the CAT5e Ethernet cable. During our development process I encouraged the team to use something standard like this. As this would ensure a off the shelf cable which could be used of any length to meet all user needs and environments.
The Water Hero system is powered by a 120 VAC PSU that outputs 5 VDC at 2 amperes. The system has a integrated lithium ion cell to offer back up power during a grid down event. In my Alpha / Beta tests I was able to cycle open & close the water shut off valve more than 50 times before I stopped the test.
The system comes with a three foot length of CAT5e Ethernet cable to connect to the water meter sensor.
WATER HERO - CLOUD HOSTED PORTAL:
In another thread entry I'll go through the entire on boarding process and how to link the system to the water hero portal service. For now I will simply recap the information I published early on in this projects thread.
The system has two dry contact outputs which can be used to send a pulse when the feature selection is enabled. For this project both of the dry contacts will be sending the water consumption pulse for the entire home to two dedicated GEM's.
As seen below the values were defined to Liters vs Gallons and the pulse width used to obtain those readings. In my case 0.26 gallons is the value translated into metric liters. A 800 ms pulse value was found to be the ideal working range the GEM found acceptable.
During the install process I forgot to enable pulse output 1.
I must have wasted a good 35 minutes checking wires, polarity, and swapping out ports until I realized the output to the Water Hero was still disabled!!
These are the preliminary alert options the Water Hero system is cable of monitoring and generating. The system can be configured for alert only, reactive shut off of the main valve, or the both.
Important to me was the ability to send email and true SMS. As many other systems use a email relay system to mimic true SMS.
There are several utilities and calibration tools to help fine tune the system if required.
The dashboard offers real time water flow gauge, temperature, and home & away toggles. There are many pending updates to come in 2018 ~ I look forward to them! Along with the iOS smart application that will offer more features and graphing insight.
As of this writing there is no long term historic recall that a user can obtain. This is why I pushed so very hard for direct integration with the Brultech Green Eye Monitor (GEM).
The Water Hero wrist band from the company.
BRULTECH DASH BOX - MONITORING, TRACKING, HISTORIC RECALL: THE ULTIMATE SOLUTION
As noted up above the limited charting provided by the Water Hero web hosted portal service was not enough for me.
I am truly not a fan of the whole cloud first vs local first.
It comes as no great surprise that Brultech Dash Box fills any possible need or wants in terms of charting, graphing, and long term historic recall. The major benefit is all of the data is held securely locally with no dependence on the happy cloud!!
Ben & Paul have continued to push the limits of vulnerable Dash Box (DB) to offer more than it was ever designed to do. Its been a complete honor and privilege to have helped the team in the development process over the last eight years. Having a small hand in the process to identify bugs and push for more features has been my primary goal.
Brultech, is a Canadian company that shines far above those toy like products that pretend to be a energy monitor . . .
Below is quick snap shot of what this incredible energy monitoring data server is capable of. This image capture shows the DB is able to show the entire day, weeks, months, years, of water usage.
From minimum, maxim, and daily average.
The next tab provides insight to the total water consumption and renders the same data in a bar chart. Like the other tab you can select any day, week, month, year, or custom range to view.
The next tab offers a live view of the real time water consumption in the home.
Brultech's Dash Box offers the user the ability to create custom charts and graphs that can be linked to any other channel in the system. As seen here both GEM's are tracking the global water consumption in the home.
Another chart that tracks the daily water consumption trends.
The power of the DB is having the ability to compare previous day(s) consumption. Knowing this sort of historic data will allow a person to modify their behavior, track potential leaks, consideration of time of use for watering the grass, flowers, during cooler periods etc.
Nothing motivates a person more than seeing the dollar and cents of their consumption. Using the Brultech Dash Box its accurate, precise, and easy to view and understand.
And of course who doesn't like a big fat f^cken gauge to see what's happening?!?!
The DB is configured to display all eight pulse channels in real time. This just so happens to be just one of them inside a custom dashboard.