Water leak detection sensors for commercial buildings.
Water leak sensors for commercial buildings, designed and built end to end: moisture sensing, a battery-powered board, firmware, a radio link for plant rooms and risers, and alerting. Our closest build is a LoRaWAN temperature node for a water hygiene setting, with one unit on trial in a plant room.
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The problem
A leak sensor lives in awkward places: plant rooms, risers, voids and under floors, where a signal struggles and a battery change is a job in itself. It must sit unattended for long periods and still raise an alert on the day it matters. A sensor that goes silent is worse than none, because it looks as though all is well. Our own temperature node showed this: it sat in a sleep state it could not leave for a week, with nothing to reset it, until someone visited. The case study covers how that was traced and fixed. The same lesson would shape a leak sensor from the first day. Cable sensing and spot sensing suit different places, and the choice affects how the board is built.
What we'd build
Leak sensors for the places water damage starts
Wireless leak sensing with the firmware, radio link and alerting behind it. We would build this for you; the trial node mentioned above measured temperature, not water. Where water is most likely to appear, and how fast you need to hear about it, would be the first design questions.
| Layer | What we'd do | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Sensing board | A custom board around moisture sensing, such as a spot sensor or a cable, with battery power. Whether flow sensing is needed would be decided with you. | Cable versus spot sensing, where the sensor sits relative to likely leak points and how it is protected once it has been wet |
| Firmware | Wake briefly, check and report. How a wet reading is told apart from condensation would be worked out against real conditions. | Our trial node now has a 32 s hardware watchdog and never sleeps longer than 20 s |
| Radio | LoRaWAN, NB-IoT or BLE, chosen for plant rooms and risers where signal can be poor. Gateway placement would be part of the design. | Gateway placement in or near plant rooms, with a survey of risers and basements before any design is fixed |
| Alerts | A network server and telemetry database, with alerts and an event record you can use with your own clients. | Who is alerted, how fast, and how an acknowledged alert is recorded |
| Mechanical | Sealing and mounting for wet locations, scoped with you at the start. | Sealing, cable routing and fixings suited to damp, cramped plant rooms |
How working with us goes
- 01 Scope We agree what has to be built, where it lives and where the data goes.
- 02 Prototype Working hardware and firmware on your bench, tested against real conditions.
- 03 Pilot A small batch on real sites, with fixes folded back into the design.
- 04 Production Design for manufacture, a production run, and support once it is in the field.
Related
Legionella monitoring ·Damp and mould monitoring ·New-build specification ·IoT product design · All sectors →
Need a leak sensor designed and built?
Custom hardware, firmware and software, from first sketch to production.
Talk to us about your project alessio.grespi@gmail.comWant it deployed, ready to run?
Paqett, our monitoring company, runs white-label water hygiene monitoring. If you would rather buy than build, ask whether it suits your buildings.
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