DoubleDip: leveraging thermoelectric harvesting for low power monitoring of sporadic water use

  • Authors:

  • Paul Martin;Zainul Charbiwala;Mani Srivastava

  • Affiliations:

  • University of California, Los Angeles;University of California, Los Angeles;University of California, Los Angeles

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 10th ACM Conference on Embedded Network Sensor Systems
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

We present DoubleDip, a low power monitoring system for enabling non-intrusive water flow detection. DoubleDip taps into minute thermal gradients in pipes for both replenishing energy reserves and performing low power wakeup. One of the remaining issues with wireless water monitoring in residences and offices is that current solutions require installing sensor nodes with access to electrical wiring or replacing batteries frequently. DoubleDip (DD) significantly extends the lifetime of vibration-based non-intrusive water flow sensors by harvesting thermal energy from hot pipes wherever accessible. DoubleDip requires less than an inch of exposed metal pipe to attach a coupler for gathering sufficient energy to power itself, in some cases, into perpetuity. We observe that water use in homes and offices is incredibly sporadic, making continuous monitoring both impractical and wasteful. Instead, DD puts a thermoelectric harvester into double duty. It uses thermal gradients not only for gathering energy but also for extremely low power (