Anti-Water Waster

In our house is an alleged water waster who leaves the faucet running for excessive amounts of time. This Anti-Water Waster is designed to be a gentle reminder to said water wasting individual.

You will need

• laptop
• Makey Makey kit including
  • Makey Makey board
  • Makey Makey USB cable
  • 2 wires with alligator clips on the ends
• another longer length of wire
• wire cutters strippers

• Cut a length of wire to go from the under sink drain pipe up to the counter.
• Strip off 8-10 inches of insulation on one end using wire strippers.
• Strip off 1 inch of insulation from the other end. (Photo 1)

• Wrap longer uninsulated end around the metal drain pipe under your sink (under the cabinet or in the pedestal) and twist it around itself to make a good electrically conductive connection. (Photo 2)

• Open and turn on your laptop.
• Connect the Makey Makey circuit board to the laptop with the included USB cable. (photo 1)
• Using one of the included wires with alligator clips on both ends, connect from the "Space bar" section of the Makey Makey to a metal part of the water faucet. (photos 2 & 3)
• Using the other alligator clipped wire, connect the "earth" section of the Makey Makey bar to the longer wire that you wrapped around the drain pipe. (photo 4)

Photo 5 is an overview of the whole set up.

• Go to scratch.mit.edu and click "create" towards the upper left.
• Click "Sound" and then on the "start sound" block, click "Meow" and "record" to record your audio message. I used "Please turn off the water." (Photo 1)
• Copy the coding blocks I used. (Photo 2)

Simply click the green flag button in Scratch on your laptop, which will start the program running and sets the volume to 50%.

When the water is turned on, it completes the circuit from the "space bar" section of the Makey Makey to the "earth" or ground on the Makey Makey board. This tells the laptop that the "space bar" has been pressed. That tells Scratch to wait 10 seconds, then play the audio recording, "Please turn off the water" in my case. It then increases the volume by 10.

If the water continues to run (and thus the electricity continues to flow), Scratch believes the space bar is still being presses and the loop continues, playing the audio recording again a bit louder until the water is turned off.