Hello all, I am brand new to the forums and this is my first post. I have developed a new approach to automated water leak detection based on acoustics. The design is completely open source with the relevant documentation available on github. I want to emphasize that it is in a pre-production state of development and would need to be connected with a wireless network hardware to gain functionality in a monitoring system, ie. it is not a stand-alone device. It has been picked up by Crowd Supply and is listed on their site as a pre-launch product:
https://www.crowdsupply.com/microphonon/aquaping
I’d be interested in any community feedback. Thanks.
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The AquaPing is now open for pre-orders at Crowd Supply, same link as above. We were able to navigate around the chip shortage and have sufficient inventory on hand to do a limited production run.
Update: The Crowd Supply campaign for the acoustic leak sensor was successful and a production run has been completed. Units are being shipped to backers in 17 US States and 7 countries.
Update: The AquaPing sensor now works with ESPHome. Files for D1-mini firmware, yaml, and a dashboard are available in this github repository.
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Biggest challenges:
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Sending data from the HA frontend to the D1-mini and then to the sensor over I2C. There are many examples illustrating how to retrieve data from sensors on I2C, but not much info about going in the other direction.
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Auto-scaling the horizontal bar graphs.
Searching through old forum posts was helpful, but this project still required a lot of hacking.
I think that is some nice out of the box thinking but idk if I’d like it as a standalone leak detector. What if it’s a high pressure spray or the leak isn’t close enough to the microphone to pick up the dripping? Using this with a traditional leak sensor, now that has some value IMO. I think it’s a brilliant idea though. I’m looking forward to seeing what else comes out of that brain of yours.
Thanks for the comments. The sensor works as a stand-off device, ie. it can detect very small leaks at a significant separation distance. It’s analogous to a smoke detector and should be placed where it can clearly monitor the environmental acoustics. Attics and crawlspaces are target applications. An early prototype was tested at UL in Chicago and it was able to identify a simulated water leak flowing at 0.04 gpm at a distance of 33 ft (maximum attainable in their lab). It can also hear leaks behind drywall/sheetrock if placed anywhere on the wall – no access hole needed. It was designed for battery-powered remote deployment and should run multiple years on 2 x AAA (not counting energy use of the wireless hardware!). And you are right, it can nicely complement existing water leak sensor tech like contact moisture sensors and smart meters. More info in the links above.