MachineTalker, Inc. has entered into a technical support agreement with Santa Barbara-based Listen4U to transmit information about water flow and usage pattern in homes, agricultural areas, and multi-unit buildings such as hotels, apartments and hospitals. The companies announced that they have collaborated to build a product that will be able to wirelessly monitor pipes throughout a home or office or hotel to determine if there are leaks and send alerts to the owner or maintenance department. In some outdoor, agriculture applications, sensors can be up to 1/4 mile apart.Listen4U's extremely sensitive sensors, attached to pipes (plumbing), detect unexpected water flow patterns and use these patterns to detect leaks. Sensor information is relayed by MachineTalker's wireless mesh network, delivering an automatic alert for the owners and maintenance staff.
Current test sites have included homes, agricultural sites and hotels. In critical industrial applications the intelligent Talker units can be programmed to take local action by closing valves while reporting the incident or to take controlled steps in response to commands sent by the maintenance staff.
"Water is becoming a scarce commodity that is going to demand better controls and management," said Roland F. Bryan, MachineTalker's CEO. "We feel that the simple coupling of the Listen4U device to our MachineTalker will bring about an easy to use product that will serve the much greater purpose of water conservation."
