Water readings to be available online

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Visakhapatnam: Household water meter readings will now be available on digital media for municipal administrators to access anytime, anywhere via mobile, i-pad, or computer. 
 
This innovative technology application, developed by a Delhi based company, i3Indya Technologies, was tested at the Jodhpur Jal Board as part of an e-governance initiative.  Nearly one lakh meters in the city will be connected  online  through this facility.
 
Considering the efficacy of the system, the Union government has suggested that the state governments adopt such technologies under the Automatic Meter Reading Project for online monitoring rather than deploying personnel for physical verification of meters to generate bills every month.
 
“Regular monthly manual checking of water meters has always  posed  a problem for municipal officials. Jal Boards and Municipal Corporations face difficulty with faulty meter reading and corruption,” said Jaspreet Singh, co-founder and director of Delhi based i3Indya technologies.
 
With help of a GSM-GPRS module the meter reading taken by a micro controller will be directly fed to a server online and the consumer or the municipal official who supervises water supply will be able to track it at all times. Water meter system captures the real time data and sends it to the server via GPRS eliminating the need for door to door reading.
 
No external power source is required to run the system and if there is no water consumption then the device goes into sleep mode and consumes power lesser than 150uA at 3.7VDC and wakes up only on water consumption. The system utilises battery power which can run for six years.