WaterEasy

An easy, simple and convenient water-conserving enviro-conscious app to help farmers mitigate water consumption

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Inspiration

We will soon face a crisis.

The USDA reports that agriculture today requires eighty to ninety percent of the nation’s water supply. This is a serious problem. We only have one earth and its supplies are limited. As water scarcity becomes a growing concern, it is estimated that in 7 years, “half of the world’s population will be living in water-stressed areas.” The scarcity of clean water has a domino effect; as it becomes more scarce, its price increases, in turn causing the price of food to skyrocket, triggering severe disruptions in the overall economy.

The fate of our species does not rest on the power of a nuclear bomb, but on the affordable access to clean water.

But what if life did not have to be like this? What if we lived in a world that we did not have to voice these concerns because our consumption of water in agriculture was so much lower than it currently is?

My partners and I do not believe in the phrase what if. We believe in the saying let’s go, let’s continue for another generation, let’s thrive and see what great new things humans will create to make the world a better place for all. We came up with a solution to mitigate the scarcity of clean water and we called it WaterEasy.

What it does

WaterEasy is the simple solution for farmers and gardeners to monitor the proper time to water their plants, saving them valuable energy and resources. Your WaterEasy dashboard with real-time data can be accessed via mobile or web app and you can choose to have messages sent to you that notify you when your plants need to be watered.

How it works: To set up your portal, simply place the moisture sensor in nearby soil, turn on your WaterEasy device, and it should immediately begin monitoring the health of your plants. That’s it! You can download the IOS or Android app to send you notifications and see real-time data or you can see a graph of your data in real time on the web. You are one drop closer to saving the world!

How we built it

First, we worked with the Arduino kit provided by TCS, and programmed it in C. Then, we used a variety of modern technologies to build both a web and mobile (Android and IOS) applications, incorporating Angular and Flutter SDK/Dart language for the frontend, and MongoDB and Node.js for the backend.

Challenges we ran into

Previous to this project, none of us had any experience working with the Arduino hardware, and self-taught ourselves to build the project, which was a challenge indeed! Some other challenges we ran into were connecting the Arduino to the Internet, and correctly parsing JSON in Flutter and displaying the real-time data from the server to the UI.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were super excited when we finally completed the Arduino and were able to collect real-time data from the sensors. We were also ecstatic to see the Arduino web and mobile apps coming together with our backend.

What we learned

We learned how to build an Arduino, code in the C language, hook both web and mobile with our backend.

What's next for WaterEasy

We loved working in this project, and want to expand further to help farmers. For next steps, we want to build and implement more sensors, such as measurements for air quality, wind power, etc. We will also upgrade our applications to implement features, such as text message alerts on when to water the plants, login authentication, improved user experience etc.

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