I want to build a smart water meter because I need to graduate 😂

When the Hashnode writing challenge began, I remember going through every single article suggestion for the four weeks and finally settling on what I'd write each week (I created a Google sheet to track it and everything. This year I have been using over five Google sheets to track different aspects of my life. I'll write an article at the end of the year on how that worked out). This week the plan was to write about my portfolio website, having published it already.

Clearly, we are not writing about that today from the title of this article. I'm yet to publish it, but the plan is to do so by the end of the month. Stick around for that because I would definitely appreciate your input and feedback on the final product.

Little story time before I dive into the article itself, I almost didn't write this article; Almost dropped off from this challenge because I wasn't able to fulfill the plan I had of writing an article on how I created my Portfolio website(The plan was to have it complete, deployed and live, with a link attached to the article), then my friend posted something on his WhatsApp status which really challenged me to get out of my own way and write this. Here it is👇. I hope it provides some much-needed Monday (or whatever day of the week you're reading this) motivation to you.

Storytime is done, so let's dive right into the intent of publishing this article. A little mini intro just to put things into perspective; I am in my final year(fifth- I say final year because saying the fifth year just makes me realize how long studying for this degree has taken me😂) studying Electrical and Electronics Engineering at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.

In order to graduate, I am required to implement a project that makes use of the engineering concepts I have learned in school. For my project, I decided to tackle the problem of water as a scarce utility. The world's population has been growing tremendously over the past decade and with the growing population, it begs the question: Will we have enough resources to sustain this population? My study focuses on Kenya itself and the staggering number of people that don't have access to water.

Below is an infographic to put things into better perspective. It shows the top ten countries without access to clean water. The closer you look at it, the more the problem becomes more and more apparent.

Over the next three months, I will be working on a prototype that will allow water utility companies to get real-time information on water usage from all the people they supply water to and be able to remotely control the supply. The users will also have access to real-time data on their water usage. This smart water metering system will be able to generate its own energy, making it autonomous. I will go into more detail on how I will achieve this when I will be writing a follow-up article in December on how I was able to achieve the above.

Imagine if, on top of getting access to real-time information on your water usage, this was further broken down into how much water was used in the different parts of your home, say the kitchen, the showers, etc.?

Stick around and we'll see whether I will add this feature to my project!