Leakio | Devpost

Render
Custom PCB
Schematic
Model
Model

Inspiration

Over one-fourth of Canadians during their lifetimes will have to deal with water damage in their homes. This is an issue that causes many Canadians overwhelming stress from the sheer economical and residential implications.

As an effort to assist and solve these very core issues, we have designed a solution that will allow for future leaks to be avoidable. Our prototype system made, composed of software and hardware will ensure house leaks are a thing of the past!

What is our planned solution?

To prevent leaks, we have designed a system of components that when functioning together, would allow the user to monitor the status of their plumbing systems.

Our system is comprised of:

Two types of leak detection hardware

Acoustic leak detectors: monitors abnormal sounds of pipes.

Water detection probes: monitors the presence of water in unwanted areas.

Our hardware components will have the ability to send data to a local network, to then be stored in the cloud.

Software components

Secure cloud to store vital information regarding pipe leakages.

Future planned app/website with the ability to receive such information

Business Aspect of Leakio

Standalone, this solution is profitable through the aspect of selling the specific hardware to consumers. Although for insurance companies, this is a vital solution that has the potential to save millions of dollars.

It is far more economical to prevent a leak, rather than fix it when it already happens. The time of paying the average cost of $10,900 US dollars to fix water damage or a freezing claim is now avoidable!

In addition to saved funds, our planned system will be able to send information to insurance companies for specific data purposes such as which houses or areas have the most leaks, or individual risk assessment. This would allow insurance companies to more appropriately create better rates for the consumer, for the benefit of both consumer and insurance company.

Software

Front End: This includes our app design in Figma, which was crafted using knowledge on proper design and ratios. Specifically, we wanted to create an app design that looked simple but had all the complex features that would seem professional. This is something we are proud of, as we feel this component was successful.

Back End: PHP, MySQL, Python

Hardware

Electrical

A custom PCB is designed from scratch using EAGLE
Consists of USBC charging port, lithium battery charging circuit, ESP32, Water sensor connector, microphone connector
The water sensor and microphone are extended from the PCB which is why they need a connector

3D-model

Hub contains all the electronics and the sensors
Easy to install design and places the microphone within the walls close to the pipes

Challenges we ran into

Front-End: There were many challenges we ran into, especially regarding some technical aspects of Figma. Although the most challenging aspect in this would’ve been the implementation of the design.

Back-End: This is where most challenges were faced, which includes the making of the acoustic leak detector, proper sound recognition, cloud development, and data transfer.

It was the first time any of us had used MySQL, and we created it on the Google Cloud SQL platform. We also had to use both Python and PHP to retrieve and send data, two languages we are not super familiar with.

We also had no idea how to set up a neural network with PyTorch. Also finding the proper data that can be used to train was also very difficult.