Over the first year of the WaterSign project, significant progress has been made on the engineering level to turn the WaterSign System into a commercial product. This includes the completion of:
- a commercial, low-power, small and inexpensive electronic controller that is fed from a solar panel and is designed to work in external environmental conditions.
- a commercial marker suitable for mass production by injection molding plastic. The new marker is actually a dual marker that is suitable for both regulated water systems and non-regulated water systems. In addition, the marker has a wide range of water flow operation, which allows it to be installed in both 2” and 1.5” water systems.
- a cloud-based server that interfaces between the controllers located in the field and the users. The server collects the raw information from the controllers, runs the unique algorithm of Watersign and accordingly provides processed data, alerts and control of systems in the field according to customer's needs.
- an improved algorithm, developed by switching to binary encoding instead of Duty-Cycle encoder, as well as by adding an additional synchronization Bit to each marker ID. This BIT increases the amount of semi-orthogonal encodings to more than 40, meaning, better ID separation more than 40 markers in the system.
- a user application that is also suitable for use on a mobile phone. The application is user-friendly, allows initial setup of the water system in an intuitive way, allows monitoring and control of the water system remotely.
We have performed field tests with integration of all parts of the system, markers, controller, software, algorithm and user interface. The tests were performed in Israel in a regulated water system (in the Palmachim area) and in an unregulated water system (in the area of Kfar-Harif). The system is monitored and remotely controlled by the dedicated application developed.
We have invested time and effort in marketing and promotional activities that were stopped unfortunately due to the Covid 19 pandemic. We visited key customers in Spain and France in order to discuss installation of pilot projects, presented in several international conferences and an exhibition and met with international VC’s. In addition, updated marketing material was prepared and a clip from the field trials was uploaded to the project dedicated web site.
Over the second year we installed a full-scale pilot in Israel in addition to the one in Kfar Harif. We tested the system in various scenarios and changed the design of the marker accordingly. We also started the design of the molds and completed the production BOM for the controller. We developed the GUI and improved the algorithm. We also participated in Virtual conferences including presentation in the World Water Innovation Summit- in London (Feb 21 and LA in October 20202 and 2021). We also participated in EIMA2020 Virtual exhibition and in TAG-Isle Utilities presenting to 80 municipalities from all over Europe.
Over the third year we continued with the field testing, completed the design and manufacturing of the molds, improved the algorithm and injected 500 parts for assembly of markers. We also completed the concept design of the small size marker. We also met with several potential partners- Rivulis that its equipment is installed in Megiddo, Netafim, NDJ, Aquestia, Bermad and Talis- Raphael. We also had high level discussions with Irritec from Italy. TAVLIT also prepared 10 commercial demonstration systems including markers assembled from injected components that will be used for demonstration in Europe in the upcoming months.
