/ BACKGROUND
Water is life. It’s a development slogan you’ll hear often. But the truth is, those 3 words in that over-used sentence, are a stark reality to millions of people living in Africa.
In many regions Zambia, water is scarce and often only available in small quantities from deep boreholes that access underground water, forty, sixty sometimes even one hundred metres deep.
In my (Gareth’s) travels around Africa as a photographer I came across many boreholes in remote rural locations and on often that precious water was being used inefficiently or even wasted.
An idea began to form in my mind. What if I could develop an autonomous off-grid system that could efficiently manage water usage on remote rural boreholes?
I began to teach myself how to program Arduino microprocessors and we began building the initial versions of the system and testing them in domestic gardens with varying degrees of success.
/ ABOUT OUR PROJECT
This project is unique in that it is an in-house Mission Geeks long-term research and development experiment.
Our first prototype was installed in 2018 and has been in field testing ever since. We are currently testing our 3rd revision of this prototype and there will be several more.
The system is currently being tested in a large residential property monitoring the water levels in multiple tanks and transmitting that data to a central pump controller that turns the pumps on and off as required to ensure the available water is used as effectively as possible and none is wasted. The system also displays remaining water quantities and records usage data for further analysis.
The system has proved to be a very stable so far and the few problems encountered were easily solved… except the time when monkeys (we assume) broke open the project box on our test tanks. The next rainstorm destroyed all the electronics and we had to re-build the tank-side of the project.
The next phase of the project will involve adding several more features as well as creating a basic smartphone app to monitor the system.
/ FUNDING REQUIRED
We are very excited about the possibilities for this little R&D project and we are very happy to be partnering with Cirrus Commodities who have stepped forward to cover the initial $3,500 budget. This budget covers 2 installations in North Western Province as well as setting up a dedicated workshop and equipping it with tools and resources for future R&D projects too.
/ PROJECT PROGRESS
The progress indicators below keep track of how we are doing on this project.
/ FIND OUT MORE
If you’d like to find out more about this project, please get in touch using the form below and we’ll get back to you!
