Improved water consumption through smart sensors and the blockchain.
We use smart electrical water pressure sensors of Internet of Things open hardware to measure water consumption in households. These sensors are easy to install as they plug onto the water pipes and do not require cutting through them or unplugging them. They cost less than 20 EUR per household.
We provide a bitcoin-based solution which uses blockchain micropayment channels to pay for water consumption in real time. This fintech innovation allows for efficient low-fee trustless payments.
The backend is a RESTful API developed in Python and Django. It uses a MySQL database to store data. The mobile front-end for the consumer and the web front-end for the municipality are developed using react.js and HTML5.
The communication with the bitcoin blockchain happens using Python and the pybitcointools library for the blockchain history. The transaction is built and signed using the bitcoinjs-lib library and node.js. We use the blockchain.info API for broadcasting to the blockchain.
We are:
-
Themis Papameletiou, student of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens, professional software engineer at reEmbed, and ex-Google intern.
-
Vitalis Salis, student of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens, professional software engineer at GRNET.
-
Dionysis Zindros, blockchains PhD candidate at the University of Athens, Electrical and Computer Engineering graduate from the National Technical University of Athens, ex-Twitter intern, ex-Google, ex-deviantART.
This project was developed during the weekend at the SmartCity Crowdhackathon.
MIT.