The problem Hydro-chain solves

The conventional water consumption analysis and billing mechanism is known to be inefficient, prone to tampering and extremely vulnerable to corruption. Billing is done solely on the basis of water-meter readings and does not take into account discrepancies caused by leaks or meter faults. This has resulted in multitudes of incidents where people have received exorbitantly high water bills, even when it wasn't their fault. Adding to that, water scarcity is also emerging as a significant issue in most parts of the world and it is surely the need of the hour to democratize the usage of water.

An IoT-based water consumption analysis device allows for complete insight and control over this procedure . Along with that, the use of blockchain shall bring greater transparency to this process. The proposed device is inexpensive and suitable for mass-adoption. The device sensors can dynamically record the water usage data on to the blockchain, this ensures non-tamperable and secure storage of usage-records. It can also identify unusual water consumption trends by comparison with previous tamper-proof records and can help to immediately identify leaks in the household plumbing network. The Hydro-chain system enables you to help you get a clear idea regarding your water usage, also helping you change your behaviours and save money. Bill payments can be done directly to the Water Authority, powered by Matic's instant transactions. This ensures credible payments, avoiding intermediaries.

Though IoT systems are thought to compromise on privacy and security, Blockchain further fortifies the security of the system. The collaboration between Blockchain and IoT thus provides a secure, transparent and seamless mechanism to decentralize water bills.

Challenges we ran into

Lack of appropriate hardware was the major challenge that we had faced. Though the project is actually devised to use a Flow-rate meter or Hall-effect sensor for the project, we had to build the prototype with a proximity sensor since that was the only sensor we had with ourselves. We had also initially faced some difficulty in integrating the hardware module and the Hydro-chain DApp, but were able to optimize it after some trial runs.