Intelligent Water Level Monitoring System Using
2020 IEEE International Symposium on Sustainable Energy, Signal Processing and Cyber Security (iSSSC) | 978-1-7281-8880-5/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/iSSSC50941.2020.9358827
IoT
*
Sandhya.A.Kulkarni∗ , Vishal D Raikar∗ , Rahul B K∗ , Rakshitha L V∗ , Sharanya K∗ and Vandana Jha∗
∗ Department of Computer Science and Engineering
K S School of Engineering and Management, Bengaluru, India
Email: akulkarni.sandhya@gmail.com
Abstract—Ever since the evolution of earth, water management
has become one of the crucial factors for human survival. In
evolving years, significant efforts have been put to come up with
solutions based on IoT technology for areas such as water level
measurement. The main issue that is being addressed in this
work is about developing an efficient level sensor based water
monitoring system that monitors the water level in the domestic
areas i.e. inside homes. The proposed system will detect the water
level through depth sensors and verifies the threshold value that
is set i.e.(> 20 cm). If the value is less than threshold value, no
action needs to be taken and if the value is beyond threshold value
, the Arduino UNO alerts the user through call by using GSM
module. Simultaneously, with the increase in the water level, the
proposed system evacuates the water to a storage tank through
submersible water pump. This extracted water can be used for
some other purposes like watering plants, domestic usage etc
without wasting the water.
Index Terms—IoT, water level sensors, GSM, submersible
pump, threshold, water management.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Water is an exhaustible resource, which plays vital role in
different sectors like agriculture, industry and also balancing
the ecological life cycle, all the living creatures including
human beings. People are ignorant towards realising the im-
portance of consumption of minimum requirement of water
for their body. Wastage of water happens in many ways. This
wastage happens from domestic household to industrial level
that may be in terms of the water leakages happening in taps
or domestic water tank and also accommodation, filtration
and high scale management in factories. Therefore there is
a requirement of real time and an accurate protocol based
system. Water has its own level of importance according to
different fields, it may be for survival or economical or other
various fields. Hence, saving water is one of the challenging
aspects for the survival of human race. Technology nowadays
has become an integrated part of people’s lives. The era of IoT
has started from the year 2009. IOT is a simple, easy to use
technology which has its effective scalable applications.The
application of IoT can be extended to water management,
which brings the cost effective and reliable approach that can
be used for water level monitoring.
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A. Motivation
Due to heavy rainfall, excessive water gets accumulated
in living area, can cause terrible scene of suffering, loss
and devastation. Hence, there is a requirement of water level
monitoring system, which will check the water level and can
take necessary action immediately without human intervention
to save from losses. Water level monitoring system can be
employed in various applications like food grains storage units,
residential areas where the rainfall is relatively more.
B. Contribution
This work aims to design and develop an internet of things
enabled water monitoring system that analyses the level of
water and takes necessary measure to drain the excess water
to storage tank. It also intimates the user about the water level,
if it reaches beyond the threshold value.
C. Organization
The contents of the paper are arranged as follows. Section II
highlights about related work. Section III focuses on proposed
system. In section IV hardware and software components are
presented. Section V discusses experiment and result and last
section VI includes conclusion of the paper.
II. R ELATED W ORK
Perumal et.al [1] proposed a protocol based on the IOT
technology for the real time monitoring of water level in
disaster prone areas. The working principle of this prototype
was based on a water level which is an important parameter,
used to control the flow of the system, especially in regions
which are susceptible to flood. Ultrasonic sensors were used to
evaluate the water level, the data collected from sensors were
displayed on LCD and also stored on server. This managed
water monitoring system is deployed on the host. Once water
level exceeds, the results were reflected on remote dashboard
and social media networks like Twitter handles.
Gunde et.al [2] has developed IoT based water management
system in large campus without human intervention. Ultra-
sonic sensors were used detect the water level in tank and
send water level details to Arduino, which in turns signals to
raspberry pi to display the water level details on webpage
and same data is also stored on cloud. The system was
programmed such that the minimum value(20%) of the water
level triggers the submersible water pump to run and stop
automatically when the water level value is maximum(80%).
Message was sent as alert on detecting the maximum water
level.
Shah et.al [3] has proposed a intelligent water monitoring
system, along with an android application feature. This system
has the flexibility to provide the user with remote monitor-
ing ability through android application. This prototype was
adapted to the existing tanks as well. The android application
was developed using user-friendly MIT app inventor.
The app used in proposed system has a simple mechanism to
store minimum and maximum values of the water level in tank,
based on which current water level in the tank was displayed.
The data security is ensured by validating the credentials each
time the user tries to access the data. The pattern of usage and
wastage of water can be analysed and determined measures
was taken accordingly. This remote monitoring is achieved
through smart phones/laptops.
Praba et.al [4] has proposed water level monitoring system
for conventional water tank through an android application.
The proposed system helps in monitoring the water flow, in
raising issues with respect to water related problems and even
tracking them. The proposed system has four modules, first
module collects the data from sensor and sends it to the second
module IoT, from IoT module the data is stored in cloud
module which serves as third module and it uses carriots as a
tool to design an android application. In the fourth module the
end users can access the water level details through webpage.
It also gives security in terms of avoiding illegal access to the
controls (i.e. motor), where only privileged users can access.
Min-Allah et.al [5] has developed a prototype which uses
the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) in android ap-
plication for observing water levels of tanks in KSA. The
proposed system has 3 layers namely physical, service and
presentation layers. The physical layer consists of ultrasonic
sensor which detects the water level, this data is given to the
service layer which stores the data on the cloud server and at
the presentation layer the android application is used to give
information to the user.
Siddula et.al [6] the main intent of this work is to automate
most of the process involved in the management of all the
dams for futuristic point of view for centrally controlling
activities from a single server. This centrality can be gained by
using applications which exhibits mechanism to link IOT and
cloud services. The very first stage in this process would be
gathering of the structured data flowing out from the sensors
such as ultrasonic sensors. Considering the ultrasonic sensors
they communicate with a base station which is local to them,
using a simple mechanism composed of a microcontroller
which can adopt both far and near communications. The
second stage is concerned about the transferring of data in
a shorter distance range with respect to a local base station.
Some of the famous short range data transfer technologies
like blue tooth can be used for the range of 100 metres and
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successful data transmission happens with the arduino with the
help of a interface, technologies of higher range can also be
used according to the need. The third stage deals with much
higher range of transmissions, these transmissions are in terms
of several hundreds of kilometres. This technology helps the
central station to gather data to read and command from the
nodes which are much more far away from it. The perfect
technology which is to be used is not concluded yet. Some of
the communication technologies used for these purposes are
narrow band IOT and LPWA network.
De Paula et.al [7] mainly focuses on usable scenarios such
as building apartments or smart building and related working
environments for the purpose of alerting users on issues such
as water contamination breakage of tanks and other common
leakages and the consumption rate with respect to these
environments. It not only detects vulnerable scenarios but also
helps in avoiding and controlling the damages that can be
caused due to these uncertain situations and maintaining the
damage rate to a minimal. The solution proposed is flexible
enough to take actions according to the situations such as
switching on and off the water supply to avoid much more
wastage of water. The middleware acts as a storage medium
for the data flowing from the sensors and also display the data
wherever required and resuming the flow of the data to other
devices in the IOT environment accordingly.
Manoharan et.al [8], has proposed a wireless connectivity
called LoRa to keep track of water quality, distribution, usage
of potable water and leakage detection of chemical in rivers.
The sensors for monitoring the quality, quantity, level are
connected to the KT-LoRa mote through GPIOs to the tanks.
Based on the data got by sensors the village head can take
decision refilling the water in tank and check the quality of
water also.
Wadekar et.al [9], has proposed an IOT tool which assist
to manipulate and plan water usage. Sensors are located
inside the tank, which constantly updates the water level data.
This data is loaded on the cloud. Person can visualize the
water level data by using android application. Based on water
level in the tank, the working of water pump is controlled
automatically. The water pump turns on, if there is low water
level and it shuts off when the tank is about to be filled.
Gupta et.al [10], has proposed an smart approach to identify
the water level and purity of water using IOT. The proposed
approach uses ultrasonic sensor and turbidity sensors to mea-
sure the water level and purity respectively. The data read
by the sensors are uploaded in the cloud. The Wi-Fi module
present in the raspberry pi controller is used to remotely
connect to motor which can be turned on or off based on
the water level through mobile app.
The water level monitoring schemes discussed suffers from
some of the major drawbacks such as notification to the
concerned authority, since most of the protocols discussed uses
internet enabled alarming mechanisms, there might be chances
that those alerts may not be transferred to the concerned
authority, if the user is not online. The usage of ultrasonic
sensors poses some of the limitations such as limited detection
 Fig. 1. Architecture of Intelligent Water level Monitoring System .
range, sensing accuracy is affected by soft materials and also
changes in temperature of 5-10 degrees or more affects the
sensor accuracy.
III. P ROPOSED S YSTEM
The proposed system is named as intelligent water monitor-
ing system based on IoT. The components that are being used
in development of the proposed system model are Arduino
UNO, precise water level depth detection sensors, which
calculate the increase in water level accurately, submersible
motor pump, to evacuate excess water to storage tank.
Alerting system is been introduced using GSM technology
which gives alert call to the user efficiently without any regis-
tration or usage of internet. Immediate action like evacuation
of water measures are taken with the help of relay and a motor
which reduces the risk of user about loss of goods or grain.
The architecture of the proposed system is shown in Fig. 1.
IV. H ARDWARE AND S OFTWARE C OMPONENTS U SED IN
WATER M ONITORING S YSTEM
The following section discusses about the hardware compo-
nents used in the development of intelligent water monitoring
system.
A. Arduino UNO
It is an ATmega328P microcontroller. It consists of 14
digital I/O pins and 6 analog input pins. It has a flash memory
of 32 KB of which 0.5 KB is used by boot loader. It has
SRAM, EEPROM of 2KB and 1KB respectively. The clock
speed is 16 MHz. All operations are synchronized with the
clock. It is an open-source platform, means the boards and
software are readily available and anyone can modify and
optimize the boards for better functionality.
B. GSM Module 900
The SIM900A is a readily available GSM/GPRS mod-
ule,used in many mobile phones and PDA. It is a compact
and definitive wireless module used in IoT and embedded
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applications. It works on frequencies 900/ 1800 MHz and
automatically searches these bands. The data transfer can be
set by AT commands.
C. Water Level Depth Detection Sensor
This sensor module has series of parallel exposed traces to
measure droplets/water volume in order to determine the water
level. It is very easy to monitor water level as the output to
analog signal is directly proportional to the water level. This
output analog values can be directly read via analog to digital
converter and can also be connected directly to Arduino’s
analog input pins. The water level is determined based on
the resistance, if sensor is immersed in more water, results in
higher resistance which indicates the water level is more and
vice versa.
D. Relay
A relay is an electrically operated switch that can be turned
on or off, letting the current go through or not, and can be
controlled with low voltages, like the 5V provided by the
Arduino pins.
E. Mini Submersible Motor Pump
A submersible pump, also called an electric submersible
pump, is a pump that can be fully submerged in water. It is
operated from a 3 6V power supply. It has max lift 40-110
cm, low rate of 80-120 L/H and 500 hours of operation. It is
suitable for varieties of water such as city water, ground water
and sea water.
F. Miscellaneous
These include USB Cables, Jumper Cables, adaptors and
sim card, which are used for external connections of devices.
The following section discuss the software requirements
G. Operating System
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages
computer hardware, software resources and provides common
services for programs.
H. Development Environment: Arduino IDE
The software used for Arduino devices is called Arduino
IDE.It is a cross platform application for Windows, macOS,
and Linux. Arduino IDE (integrated Development Environ-
ment), means that all the steps that editor, compiler, burner are
integrated in the same software. The programming language
used by the Arduino UNO is the C++. The Arduino UNO
IDE has a well-defined function for each task that is easy to
remember. The Arduino IDE employs the program to convert
the executable code into a text file in hexadecimal encoding
that is loaded into the Arduino board by a loader program in
the board’s firmware.
V. E XPERIMENT & R ESULT
Fig. 3. Connection of Components.
The input is collected from four water level depth detection
sensor which are been at each corner of the prototype model
as shown in Fig. 2, input data is sent to system which consist
of Arduino UNO and a GSM module SIM900 also a power
supply the data collected from sensor is analyzed through
arduino UNO board accordingly GSM module will be used
to send alert call to user if there is any increase in water
level and evacuation measures are taken with the help a relay
module and a mini submersible motor pump. The connection
of components and complete setup is shown in Fig. 3 and
Fig. 4 respectively.

Fig. 4. Complete setup.

of GSM technology as shown in Fig. 7.It also turns the motor

on which drains the water and turns off automatically when
all the water is drained off without giving much risk to user
and also ensuring safety of the goods.
Advantages of proposed system are:
Fig. 2. Water Level Sensor Setup. • It is a cost effective approach. It uses simple procedure
to measure the water level with minimal hardware and
The system continuously monitors the water level and works software resources, which are easy to install and small in
on these conditions: size.
• If water level is low: No action is taken on GSM or on • It does not require any human intervention to complete
motor modules, the system just continues to monitoring. the process of water level detection.
• If water level is medium: Arduino UNO sends infor- • Usage of GSM Module enables the user to receive
mation to GSM to make an alert call to the user and alerts,and user need not register to any android appli-
continues to measure the water level. cations to control the motor pump which is used to drain
• If water level is high: Arduino UNO sends information the excess water.
to GSM to make an alert call to the user and it also turns • The proposed system has wide range of applications. It
the submersible motor on which drains the water to the can be installed in the following areas such as private
storage tank and switches off automatically. pump. houses, bungalows, apartments, grain storage units, insti-
Fig. 5 and Fig. 6 shows that the system first detects risk tutions like schools , colleges.
i.e, collects data from sensors and analyze that data if there • The proposed system also aims at storing the excess water
is any variation in data it sends the alert to user with the help in to storage tanks and same water can be used to do

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Fig. 5. Data reading on Serial Monitor .
Fig. 6. Water Level Increasing on Serial Monitor.
household chores, thus saving the water which helps to
combat with water scarcity issues.
Fig. 7. Getting Call from GSM Module.
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VI. C ONCLUSIONS & F UTURE E NHANCEMENTS
The proposed system can be implemented in domestic areas,
residential areas, storage rooms, work places very easily, with
only few components, which gives accurate readings of water
level and once the water reaches beyond threshold value, it
alerts the user through phone call. The components that are
used in this system are cost effective and have long life time
when compared to other devices. In this system GSM Module
is used to send alerts to the user in the form of normal
phone calls. The GSM Module does not require any internet
or Wi-Fi connections. Since the internet connections in all
the places may not be available, usage of GSM module is
one of the advantages of this system to send alerts to user.
Future enhancement can be done by notifying the maintenance
engineer about the leakages and to take necessary actions.
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