Tank Water Level Monitoring System using GSM Network Ayob Johari, Mohd Helmy Abd Wahab, Nur Suryani Abdul Latif, M. Erdi Ayob, M. Izwan Ayob, M. Afif Ayob, Mohd Norzali Haji Mohd Faculty of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, 86400 Parit Raja, Batu Pahat, Johor, MALAYSIA. Abstract- Unexpected shortage of water supply is common phenomena especially in dense population such as in hostels. Water supply at the students’ hostels is usually drawn from tank at the roof top of the building. Apparently there is no early warning system to monitor the tank water level when it has reached the critical level. The situation worsened when there is no personnel or technician in-charge to do the maintenance at the time it is needed. It becomes worst especially at the week ends and public holidays. Students have to wait for couples of days for the water supply to resume. This paper presents the development of water level monitoring system with an integration of GSM module to alert the person-in-charge through Short Message Service (SMS). The water level is monitored and its data sent through SMS to the intended technician mobile’s phone upon reaching the critical level. The prototype was tested and functioned properly as a mean to reduce the risk of unexpected shortage of water supply. Keywords: Water tank, GSM Network, SMS, water supply INTRODUCTION Students’ hostels are usually provided with water tanks and placed at the roof top of hostel buildings. Water from main inlet is pumped up to the tanks using electrical water pump. Water supplies to most part of the hostels are drawn from the tanks by means of gravity. When there is power failure, no water is pumped up to fill the tanks. As a result the water level in the tank reduces gradually. The situation becomes worse especially at the week ends and public holidays when most of the hostel residences are in. The water level of the tank reduces drastically and within short period of time the water runs out. Unexpected water shortage does occur any time if the tank is not properly monitored. Hence, a monitoring system to monitor the tank water level has to be developed and eventually able to alert the person in-charge or technician on the current status of the tank. The system consists of water level detector circuitry integrated with GSM module. Upon reaching the critical water level in the tank, an SMS is sent through GSM module to the technician in- charge for further action. RELATED WORK This section describes some previous works related to the monitoring system using GSM network services. The work presented by [1] has developed a Prepaid Water Meter System for prepaid billing of water consumption through remote monitoring without any human intervention. This system promises fast and accurate billing of water as well as preventing any misuse of it. However, [2] developed a water meter reading using GSM network that suitable for remote places to monitor the water meter reading before any billing process. This could reduce the use of human resource for reading the meter and issuing a bill. There was also a work on monitoring of electrical meter reading using GSM network done by [3]. The system was capable of monitoring the meter reading and sent an SMS to the authorized center for billing purpose. This could reduce the number of estimated reading when the authorize person unable to reach the meter. Another work presented by [4] using wireless text messaging system to send early warning SMS messages to users advising them to proactively reduce their power consumption before system capacity is reached and systematic power shutdown takes place. This could increase cost-effective wireless distributed load shedding system for non-emergency scenarios. In smart home application, the work presented by [5] was a design on a system to control home appliance remotely and provide security when the owner is away from the place. The similar work presented by [6][7] which designed and developed a smart home application system. The system allows the homeowner to be able to monitor and control the house appliances via a mobile phone set by sending commands in the form of SMS messages and receiving the appliances status. METHODOLOGY A. Flow of the system This project operates in a condition of low water level. Water detector detects the water level and then sends signal to microcontroller unit. The microcontroller circuit sends signal to GSM modem and then GSM modem sends SMS to the person in-charge mobile phone. The mobile number of the user has been set in AT command of PIC16F877A and sends alert Ayob Johari et al, / (IJCSIT) International Journal of Computer Science and Information Technologies, Vol. 2 (3) , 2011, 1114-1120 1114