Plug-and-Play Smart Water Monitoring System

AquaSmarters is a plug-and-play IoT system for monitoring and controlling household and institutional water tanks in real time. It tracks water quality and tank status continuously, giving instant alerts and a live dashboard, without requiring any changes to existing plumbing or infrastructure.

We built this as a team project and went on to compete in the SLIoT 2025 challenge, organized by the University of Moratuwa, where AquaSmarters reached the semifinals. We also showcased the project at Rextro 2025.

The Problem

Most water tanks, in homes, schools, hospitals, and factories alike, give no visibility into water quality or usage until something goes wrong. Checking water quality usually means manual testing, and tank levels are typically tracked by sight or simply guessed. For institutions like schools and hospitals, where water quality is a genuine health concern, this lack of real-time insight is a real gap.

We wanted a solution that didn’t require ripping out and replacing an existing tank setup. The system needed to be something that could be added on, not built in from scratch.

What We Built

AquaSmarters is built around a modular sensor box that can be retrofitted onto any existing water tank. Once installed, it continuously monitors:

• pH level — acidity or alkalinity of the water
• Turbidity — water clarity, an indicator of particulate contamination
• TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) — concentration of dissolved substances
• Water level — real-time tank fill percentage
• Flow rate — live measurement of water moving through the system

All of this data is captured by an ESP32 microcontroller, pushed to Firebase, and surfaced through an Android application built in Flutter. The app gives users a live dashboard, instant alerts when readings move outside safe ranges, and the ability to remotely control inlet valves.

Figure 1 — The AquaSmarters hardware setup: tank, modular sensor box, and ESP32-based control unit

The Mobile App

The app is split into three main views: a live dashboard, a detailed water quality breakdown, and historical usage tracking.

The dashboard gives an at-a-glance view of tank level as a percentage, current flow rate, and a toggle to remotely turn the inlet valve on or off — useful for controlling refill without needing to be physically near the tank.

Figure 2 — The dashboard view: live tank level, flow rate, and remote inlet valve control

The Water Quality screen goes further, scoring overall water quality out of 100 and breaking it down by individual parameter — pH, turbidity, and TDS — each with its own explanation of what the reading means and its safe range, so the app is useful even to someone with no technical background in water chemistry.

Figure 3 — The Water Quality screen: an overall quality score with individual parameter breakdowns and plain-language explanations

The Usage screen tracks consumption over daily, weekly, and monthly periods, showing trends so users can spot unusual spikes in water use, which can be an early warning sign of a leak.

Figure 4 — The Usage screen: daily, weekly, and monthly consumption tracking

Competing at SLIoT 2025

We entered AquaSmarters into the SLIoT 2025 challenge, a national IoT competition organized by the University of Moratuwa, and the project advanced to the semifinal round. Presenting the working hardware and app alongside other IoT teams was a valuable test of how the system held up outside our own lab conditions, and it pushed us to tighten both the hardware reliability and the clarity of our pitch.

Figure 5 — The team with the AquaSmarters unit at the SLIoT 2025 competition

Figure 6 — The AquaSmarters sensor unit set up at the competition venue

Closing Thoughts

AquaSmarters reflects something we cared about from the start: a smart water monitoring system should be something people can add to what they already have, not something that demands a full system replacement. Reaching the SLIoT 2025 semifinals was a strong validation of that approach, and a great experience leading a team through building real hardware, a working app, and a competition-ready pitch from the ground up.