Hardware Accelerator Team Creates Water Monitoring and Conservation System
Water is an essential resource that is used every day in nearly all homes. The amount of water each home uses can vary greatly and if appliances are using more water than they should, water bills can become unnecessarily higher. Sometimes, water in a home can become a hazard and cause costly flooding and damage. CONSRV is developing a device to measure water usage and consumption in the home, as well as alert users when there is a leak or malfunction in their home water system. CONSRV is focused on conserving one of the earth’s most precious resources and improving people’s daily lives through this real-time tracking technology.
Victoria Tan, Rohan Rai, Navin Ramsaroop, and Jacob Mathai, team members of CONSRV, met through a Cornell University program called Engineering World Health , a project team that seeks to make innovative and low-cost medical devices for developing countries and low-resource communities. Through the program, they learned about Rev’s Hardware Accelerator and applied to work on their technology.
“Currently, there’s no reasonable price for a water measurer. Everything on the market is upwards of $1,000 but we want to make our system much more affordable and be seen as an investment and protection for your home, not a luxury,” said Ramsaroop.
CONSRV is simple and easy to install and all interaction with the system can be controlled through a mobile application. The real-time tracking system helps users identify where they can conserve water and which appliances could be updated to be more energy-efficient. The app can also detect any water leak issues and alert owners before major damage occurs.
CONSRV is excited to be a part of Rev’s Hardware Accelerator and work with the many experienced entrepreneurs that are part of the program. They have received a lot of critical feedback and advice on how to improve their prototype. As part of the accelerator, the team was also taught how to conduct customer discovery and identify a market fit.
“I think one of the most valuable aspects of the Hardware Accelerator is the customer discovery process. It seems crazy now that we’ve always worked in a lab and never actually gone out and talked to our customers because we’ve learned so much from them,” said Tan.
The CONSRV team is eager to take what they’ve learned in Rev’s Hardware Accelerator and continue to build their business plan at Cornell University in the fall.
CONSRV will present their prototype and progress with their business plans on August 9, 2018 at Rev’s Hardware Accelerator Demo Day.