Development of a self-powered wireless sensor node to measure the water flowrate by using a turbine flowmeter

Abstract A self-powered wireless sensor node was developed to measure the water flowrate. It is composed of a turbine flowmeter and an IoT control unit. The turbine flowmeter generates electric power from the rotation of the rotor. The IoT control unit, consisting of a microcomputer and a low power wide area (LPWA) communication module, uses the power generated by the rotor rotation to detect the rotational speed of the rotor (the water flowrate) and to communicate wirelessly with a server on the Internet. Experiments were also conducted to evaluate the performance of the sensor node. The power generated by the rotor rotation was sufficient to operate the wireless sensor node as a self-powered unit. The full-scale accuracy and indication accuracy of the measured flowrate were 1.2 % and 2.8 % , respectively. The wireless sensor node could stably upload the measured flowrate to a server on the Internet.

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