ISSN 2347 - 3983

Volume
Ali Sayyed et al., International Journal of Emerging 9. No.
Trends 3, March Research,
in Engineering 2021 9(3), March 2021, 240 – 244
International Journal of Emerging Trends in Engineering Research
Available Online at http://www.warse.org/IJETER/static/pdf/file/ijeter15932021.pdf
https://doi.org/10.30534/ijeter/2021/15932021

Towards an Autonomous and Smart Water Tank System

Ali Sayyed1, Muhammad Waqar Aziz2
Department of Computer Science, CECOS University of IT & Emerging Sciences,
Peshawar, 25000, Pakistan,
1
[email protected], 2 [email protected]

 water is becoming a major problem. Conservation and

ABSTRACT distribution of water, nowadays, can also help in this regard.
Water tanks are structures used to conserve water and its use
Water is a mandatory need for all human beings. Without later. The need of a water tank is as old as of civilized man,
water, life is not possible. The increasing population of the providing storage of water for different purposes such as
world has an inverse relationship with the availability of clean drinking, food preparation, irrigation, etc. The most
water. It is used for different purposes e.g., drinking, fundamental classification of reinforced water tanks is based
washing, cooking, agriculture, industries, etc. It is one of the on whether they are on the ground or beneath [1]. Overhead
precious natural resources. Unfortunately, excessive use and water tanks, also known as elevated water tanks, are located
wastage lead to serious circumstances for other consumers. on the terrace of the building to supply water to the entire
The major causes of the wastage are overflow in overhead house. This overhead tank is either filled through the main
tanks, damaged pipelines, open and faulty water taps and
water supply or from an underground water source. Water
valves, and unnecessary consumption. Dry running of the
flows under gravity from it as the water tank is at height of the
water pumps is another important issue concerning water
building [2]. To fill an overhead tank the first step is to install
pumps. When the water from the main pipeline is not
reaching them or the flow rate of water is too low, the water a pump machine. A water pump is a device used to transport
pump will consume more electric supply, which shorten their liquid from one place to another [3]. Water pumps are
working span. On the other hand, inappropriate voltage is powered by diesel fuel, electricity, wind, solar energy, etc. [4].
also damaging the water pump motor. The drinking water Centrifugal pumps are considered as best pump choice for
with an average quality of purity is responsible for a healthy lower viscosity and high flow rates. Once the pump machine
nation. The water with inadequate levels of pH and turbidity is powered, water from the main source or underground
can invite water-borne diseases. After considering all the storage tank is sent to the overhead tank [5].
problems, a need for proper solutions is highly recommended.
In this regard, we found an adequate solution in the form of an Water safety and quality are essential to human development
autonomous system called Smart Water Tank. Our intention and wellbeing. The key test for water quality is the
is not limited to overcome the wastage of the water only but measurement of its turbidity [6]. Turbidity is the cloudiness or
also to control the unnecessary use of resources-electricity and haziness of a fluid due to the presence of a large number of
water pump, the monitoring of drinkable water quality individual particles that are generally not visible to the naked
concerning pH and turbidity level. This flexible, portable, and eye, just like smoke in the air. Turbidity levels are much
economical automated system will be responsible for
higher in water from surface water sources (e.g., streams,
automatically switching ON/OFF the water pump motor,
rivers, and lakes) than from groundwater sources. Turbidity is
monitoring the water flow rate, electricity magnitude, and its
temperature-needed for the water pump motor, during and measured and reported in Nephelometric Turbidity Units
before it takes starts for filling. All the updates for the (NTU). It is an optical measurement of water's ability to
different parameters will be displayed by the LCD and LEDs scatter and absorb light rather than transmit it in straight
installed on the system-locally as well as on the smartphone lines. Turbidity levels can range from less than 1 NTU to
app connected with Smart Water Tank System via server. more than 1000 NTU. At 5 NTU water is visibly cloudy,
whereas at 25 NTU it is murky [7]. According to the WHO,
Key words : Autonomous Systems, Smart Water Tank, the maximum allowed turbidity in drinking water should not
be more than 5 NTU and should ideally be below 1 NTU [8].
1. INTRODUCTION Another important factor of water quality is its pH (potential
of Hydrogen). The pH is one of the most common water
Water is a valuable resource for a sustainable life. As the quality tests performed [9]. A pH level is the measurement of
world’s population is increasing, the availability of clean acid-base equilibrium, and that number indicates whether a
substance is acidic or basic. The U.S, Environmental

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Protection Agency (EPA) recommends that municipal for filling overhead tanks; and at industrial level especially
drinking water suppliers should keep their water supply at a when there are many tanks with fluids. Monitoring the status
pH of 6.5 to 8.5, which is considered a safe range for drinking of many tanks and their pumping motors at the same time is
[10]. inconvenient for humans, which can be achieved by the
developed system. Similarly, the big field water tanks used in
A lot of water gets wasted because of improper distribution farming and agriculture can be filled very efficiently using the
and monitoring systems. These imbalanced systems are proposed Smart Tank. As in the traditional filling system one
responsible for providing clean water to one area but at the has to switch ON/OFF the pumps and wait for the time when
same time deprived other. If the quantity of water is consumed the big tank gets filled. The developed system can also be used
according to the needs then no doubt it also contributes in the hospitals and special care centers where the quality of
towards the preservation of these natural resources. Some the drinking water matters a lot for the patient and residents.
common reasons in our daily life for the wastage of water are The industries responsible for sale of distilled water can also
overflow in the pipelines with high pressure, overflow of the get benefits, as they can fill their tanks and check the quality
water tank, excessive usage of water than needed and so on. In of water with the developed system. Overall, the developed
a traditional water tank system, one has to switch ON the system would pull out the user from the extra efforts and
pump motor manually on encountering the water tank empty, financial burdens.
and later on turn it OFF, when the water starts flowing
through the overflow pipe. During this filling session, human 2. LITERATURE REVIEW
full-time engagement is required, which can be overburdened
in case of high consumption of water. Also, the pump failure The authors in [12] developed an embedded control system
occurs most frequently in these systems. The possible reasons for an automatic water pump to fill the overhead water storage
are dry running or high temperature of pumps during filling. tank. The system is based on the utilization of microcontroller
The replacement of pumps is costly and needs a lot of effort (AT89C52) to automate the process of filling. This intelligent
(in terms of installation/un-installation and carrying). The system detects the water level in the tank and switches on/off
other inconsistencies in the manual system can be low the pump accordingly along with displaying the status on the
voltage, dry running (or a pump is not running at all), low LCD screen. Another automated system is designed for
water level, and inappropriate quality of drinking water, etc. switching on/off (subject to the water level) the domestic
water pump along with the LED indicator [13]. The
To overcome the above-mentioned problems, an automated developers used electronic discrete components (555 timer
system named Smart Water Tank is presented in this paper. IC, transistor, resistors, relay etc.) to develop the circuitry.
The proposed system is based on the Internet of Things (IoT), This mechanism is responsible for filling the overhead water
which consists of smart machines, objects, environments and storage tank automatically along with the display of the status
infrastructures [11]. IoT involves the utilization of the sensor through different LEDs.
devices to sense and collect data from remote sites, and then
share the same data via the internet where it can be used A wireless automatic system is implemented for sending the
according to the interests. The developed system involves water from sump (underground water storage tank) to the
different sensors, responsible for filling the water tank overhead water storage tank [14]. It uses two Radio Frequency
automatically when the level of water becomes low. Other transceivers along with a microcontroller each installed at the
functionalities provided by the developed system are: tank and sump. These two transceivers are used for wireless
continuous monitoring of the water flow rate to the water communication with the help of microcontroller. When the
pump, finding the temperature of the water pump, availability sensor of overhead tank detects water at low level, it
of the electric supply and its magnitude either switched ON communicates with the sump transceiver to switch ON the
pump is running or not, availability of the water in the tank, water pump and turns it OFF when the water is filled up to the
and finding pH and turbidity of water in the tank. The user required level. In addition, if the sump is empty then buzzer
can see all this information on a smartphone application will ring to tell that sump is empty. Similarly, a smart water
connected to the Blynk cloud via the internet connectivity and tank management system is designed using Atmega 128A
also via LEDs (light-emitting diode) and LCD (liquid crystal microcontroller [15]. In the water tank, contact sensors are
display) attached to the Smart Water Tank. Blynk is an IoT deployed for water level sensing, whereas an LCD screen is
platform which allows to easily and remotely control the used to display the current status of the water level.
hardware. Additionally, the data generated by sensors can be
viewed, stored, and visualized etc. over the internet. In [16], two wireless radio transmitters are connected, one
with water level detector and second with the digital switch
One can utilize the developed system in different ways, for responsible for switching ON/OFF the water pump. Both of
instance, using at personal level for residencies and buildings the wireless radio transmitters are also integrated with a WiFi

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router. The transmitter with water tank fetches and transmits developed using the Arduino UNO microcontroller board and
the water level information, which is accessed via a smart Node MCU firmware and development kit. The programming
phone. If the smart phone is not in the communication range code was written in Arduino IDE, which was then compiled
of the WIFI router then the communication between the and uploaded to the Arduino board. To this end, some
application and the water pump is accomplished by the ready-made libraries were searched and installed to provide
Internet. The controller application installed on the android the required behavior and functionality of each module. For
smart phone is responsible for switching ON/OFF the water example, the built-in Liquid Crystal library makes it easy to
pump. The authors in [17] designed a smart water talk to character LCD displays. Some LEDs were also
management system that consists of two sensors connected to mounted on the tank for displaying different levels of water in
the Raspberry Pi chipset. In this system, one sensor is an the tank, temperature of the pump, internet connectivity and
ultrasonic sensor, used to find the water level, whereas the motor status.
other is pH sensor, used for measuring the quality of water.
The statuses of both sensors are stored in the local database as Some sensors such as pH sensor, Turbidity Sensor, Ultrasonic
well as sent to the cloud environment for future data analytics. Sensor etc., needed proper calibration before their use. To this
end, some mathematical calculations were performed based
In [18], the authors used an ultrasonic sensor to measure the on plotting graphs between different voltage values and
water level and display it on the LCD. On encountering the known values obtained from sensors. The graphical user
low water level, the water pump gets started automatically interface was developed using the built-in widgets provided
and it stops when the tank gets full. To achieve this operation, by the Blynk application. These widgets were then linked
Arduino UNO R3 is used along with ASK RF transmitter for with virtual pins, e.g., in Figure 1 Virtual Pin V2 is linked
switching ON/OFF the water pump. In contrast, IoT platform with “Value Display” widget labeled “pH of Water” that is
is used with Arduino UNO in [19]. The three different levels going to be updated every second. Similarly, other virtual pins
of water (i.e., maximum, nominal and minimum) are judged were connected with the concerned Value Display widgets to
by ultrasonic sensors. On the lowest level of water, the motor display the sensors data. Moreover, the necessary Blynk
starts automatically and stops when it reaches to the libraries were set up to transfer the data from Smart Water
maximum level set by the user. However, user can manually Tank System to Blynk Cloud and redirect it to the Smart
starts/stops motor if the water level is between minimum and Phone application. This was achieved using the
maximum via android application installed. The system is Authentication Token (send by the Blynk server), WIFI SSID
accessed by smart phone but internet connectivity is (Service Set Identifier) and Passwords while programming
mandatory. The GUI application also tells the motor status the Node MCU. Although several Protocols (such as Ethernet,
i.e., ON/OFF along with the level of water in percentage. Bluetooth, WIFI, GSM/3G/LTE, USB etc.) can be used to
connect the Arduino with Blynk [21], WiFi connectivity is
Shah et al. [20] used ESP8266 Wifi module, as used in this work.
microcontroller, that receives data about the water level from
the ultrasonic sensor and sends it to the cloud called firebase.
It also retrieves the data (e.g., minimum, maximum values of
the water level etc.) from the same cloud which are set by the
user from an application installed on android smartphone.
Similarly, IoT platform is used along with the Arduino UNO
and a few sensors. An overhead water level is sensed by the
ultrasonic sensor. If the level is less than maximum then the
water pump motor starts itself and stops when the level
reaches to the maximum. But before switching on the water
pump, this system ensures the availability of electric power-to
drive water pump, and continuous flow of water in the main
water pipe. On the inaccessibility of electric power, the user is
informed through SMS for taking further necessary actions.

3. METHODOLOGY

This work followed the iterative software development life

cycle approach. It means that the system was designed and Figure 1: Linking Widgets with virtual Pins
developed in several cycles (iterations), where new features
were added in each iteration. The proposed system was

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4. THE PROPOSED SYSTEM 4.2 Data communication

On getting start, the data from the different sensors attached

4.1 Hardware Components
with the Arduino UNO is sent to the Node MCU through
The hardware components used to develop the proposed serial communication. The Node MCU then establishes a
system comprised of the following sensors. connectivity with the Blynk Server via internet. On successful
1. pH sensor connection, a message is displayed on the LCD attached to the
The pH sensor measures the level of acidity or alkalinity of smart tank. In addition, a LED will start and remain blinking
any fluid. The pH scale ranges from 0-14, with levels less than till the system is connected with the Blynk server. Once the
7 considered acidic, levels greater than 7 considered alkaline, Blynk server receives the data, it sends it to the user’s smart
and a pH of 7 considered neutral [22]. phone app. The complete process is depicted in Figure 2.
2. Turbidity Sensor
Turbidity sensor measures the haziness or cloudiness of a 4.3 Working
fluid. Turbidity is caused by the increased number of tiny
particles which cannot be seen by the naked eyes. The As the water level reaches the pre-defined minimum level, the
turbidity sensor contains a light transmitter and a receiver, water pump starts automatically. The developed system uses a
which receives most of the light in clear waters. As turbidity submersible water pump which runs at 220 AC voltage.
of the water increases, the light receiver receives less and less While the water is being filled in the water tank, the
light. The sensor triggers when the light received is below a ultrasonic sensor continuously monitors the water level.
certain threshold. When the water reaches the maximum level the water pump
3. Ultrasonic Sensor stops automatically.
Ultrasonic sensors are great tool to measure distance without
actual contact. The ultrasonic sensor is used in this work to
tell the level of available water in the tank. It monitors the
water level all the time by the calculating the distance
between the water level and sensor itself.
4. AC Voltage Sensor
The AC Voltage Sensor is responsible for reading the direct
AC Voltage from the main power supply. This module is
capable for reading voltages from 0-250V in both 50 and 60
Hz in a single phase. However, the voltage of the main supply
is converted to Arduino voltage level before reading.
5. Water Flow Sensor
The Water Flow Sensor is used for flow rate & volume
Figure 2: Working of the Proposed System
measurements. We measured the number of pulses using
Arduino and then calculated the flow rate in liters per hour 5. CONCLUSION
(L/min) using the conversion formula [55].
Water safety and quality are the essential to human
6. Vibration Sensor
development and wellbeing. Usage of safe water is playing
The working principle of the vibration sensor is very simple.
vital role in promoting health. The pH and turbidity levels are
Whenever this module feels any vibration, it gives out high
important factors in the contribution of healthy lives of
signal otherwise output signal remains low. The magnitude of
humans. In this work a Smart Water Tank System is
the vibration is set by the onboard potentiometer. This
developed keeping the safety measures and conserving
potentiometer sets a threshold value. If the vibration of the
resources under consideration. The developed system is
module goes beyond the threshold then output signals go
capable of monitoring the water level, temperature of the
high.
water pump before and during running, water flow rate, status
7. Temperature Sensor
of water pump (either running or not), pH level and turbidity
This is a pre-wired and waterproofed (with heat shrink)
levels. Furthermore, it switches the water pump ON/OFF
version of the DS18B20 sensor. It is handy when measuring
based on the level of the water tank. This eliminates the need
something far away, or in wet conditions. While the sensor is
of person to engage with the water pump and controls the
good up to 125°C, the cable is jacketed in PVC so keeping it
wastage of water and other concerned resources. The user can
under 100°C is suggested. The 1-wire digital temperature
monitor the status of all activities on an LCD and on the
sensors are fairly precise (±0.5°C over much of the range) and
Smart Phone application. The entire system is easy to setup,
can give up to 12 bits of precision from the onboard
as little knowledge of the electronics is required. In addition,
digital-to-analog converter.
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Engineering, Vol. 3, issue 11, pp. 328-332, 2013.
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