Development of an Open-Source Water Consumption Meter for Housing

This article reports on the project "Design and development of water and gas P.L. measurement devices in the housing: an approach to sustainable consumption in Mexico", prepared at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in the Department of the Environment, whose objective was to develop a device to measure water consumption in the housing, which allows users to know their spending and can make decisions in favor of efficiency through the reduction of water use in household activities. The meter is made up of open source, programmable or reconfigurable software, which receives the signal from a water flow sensor and a casing designed to contain the hardware and facilitate the user's installation. Both the hardware and the casing can be purchased, downloaded, manufactured and assembled at home (Do It Yourself). As specific results were obtained: hardware programming and housing design and as a final result: the assembly of the functional prototype with which measurements of water consumption were made in a housing in Mexico. With this work we conclude that through the development of new accessible and common measurement technologies for the users of a house, it will be possible to promote efficiency in the use of natural resources in cities, increasing availability and promoting a more sustainable urban development.