final project development

week_05

3D printing

For the bottom of the containers a valve is needed. In the molding and casting week i want to make a silicon ring to put it into the valve to seal the container with the shutter-pipe. When the shutter-pipe with a champhered end pushes against the silicon ring sitting in the fissure on the inside of the valve, below the perforation, the container will be sealed.

week_02

3D model

The idea is to create a mechanical tool that opens and closes two containers alternately. This will make using a turbine as a generator possible even if there is only a little amount of flowing water. By attaching a floating material to the shutter-pipe, the seesaw-pipe will be pushed up by the rising waterlevel. At the critical point a rolling weight will make sure the other shutter-pipe will be closed properly.
With proximity-sensors it will be possible to count the openings and by multiplying the count with the maximum amount of water in the containers is will be possible to track the waterflow all over the year.
In very remote areas or areas with no possibility to transmit the recorded date, it should be possible to store the data on a sd-card or something similar. Crossreferences with other meteriological data and environmental monitoring (for example an adapted version of the Smart Citizen Kit) would probably reveal interesting connections.

week_01

Status

The GreenFabLab Valldaura, in the outskirts of Barcelona, is surrounded by a network of terraces and basins dating back to the 19th century which were constructed to collect, channel and finally distribute water for agricultural production.
Unfortunately the system has not been well maintained over the last decades, therefor it is not possible to take advantage of the potential it offers. To start with, it would be essential to know where there is water leaking in the system and how much.
Mapping the inclination of the channels is a different project in a later stage.

First Ideas

- a device to meassure and track the flow of water in remote areas
- with a seesaw, two containers will be filled and emptied alternately, the moves will be counted an multiplied with the capacity of the container
- the mechanical movement will be turned into electricity to power the data-transmition and/or an environmental monitoring device