ADI, Wisar and other companies use IoT to improve drinking water in Uganda

Irish company Wisar has deployed a new water well pump monitoring solution in Uganda.

Wisar, based at Letterkenny Institute of Technology, provides Internet of Things (IoT) solutions to industrial businesses in Ireland.

The solution originated from a visit to Africa by Ray Speer, Wisar board member and technical director of ADI Ireland. “He saw the problem and had an idea,” said Stephen Seawright, Wisar manager. “In East Africa, it is very common for several villages to use hand pumps to pump water. When the pumps fail, villagers can only drink unsafe water from ponds and lakes, so there is a need to monitor the status of the pumps and perform predictive maintenance where possible.”

For this reason, two companies, including CW Applied Technology and ADI, approached Wisar to study the feasibility of integrating renewable energy-driven electronic forecasting systems into water pumps, including appropriate communication methods for transmitting data from water pumps to the cloud. Fields of Life, an Irish charity, also joined this public welfare action, which provides water pumps for villages.

CW Applied Technology is an independent EMS company specializing in small to medium-sized products from prototype to commercial volume production.

Supported by a feasibility grant from Enterprise Ireland for an innovative partnership, WiSAR investigated the latest technologies for water well management. Competitive products were studied and a product requirement specification was developed for the India Mark II pump, which is commonly used in Africa.

This included studying methods for detecting and measuring water flow and proposing solutions for further development. Crucially, the sensors were connected to the cloud and required a power supply system that would last for several years. This led to the choice of low-power wide-area communication as the connection technology, with the power source being charged via solar panels or energy recovery from the movement of the pump handle.

Ultimately, the parties formed a consortium to develop a solution - the Smart Water Alliance, whose members include WiSAR, Fields of Life, ADI, Arup, CW Applied Technology, VT Networks and the Kumi Local Government of Uganda. Several companies use their respective expertise to better collaborate for the entire system.

The prototype solution has been deployed in Uganda and has proven effective. Seawright said: "The sensor monitors the working condition of the pump at all times and sends an alarm if the handle is broken or likely to break. Before, when the pump broke, people could only drink dirty water or no water at all. The sensor is powered by a small solar panel and is designed to last for three years."

“VT Networks provides Sigfox base stations, and the sensors send tiny bits of data, which are compressed into small packets and sent to the base station up to 15 kilometers away. One base station can connect to multiple wells at the same time,” Seawright said.

“Arup has invested engineering time and money, and they are designing control panels to collect data from the pumps, as well as other relevant data such as weather conditions. Now that the prototype has been proven effective in trials, we are now working on improvements, such as cheaper ways to obtain water quality indicators. The next step will be for ADI to manufacture the sensors in Ireland and install them on the pumps, working with the Fields of Life charity.”

John 'O' Connell, CEO of CW Applied Technology, added: "This interesting and impactful endeavor was born out of discussions between ADI and WiSAR. The technical feasibility studies extracted helped to engage other partners in field trials in Uganda, and we look forward to the project delivering practical solutions to improve the lives of the world's poorest people."