Elkhart group develops water monitoring system for Third World countries
Thousands in third world countries are receiving the help they need from an organization right here in Michiana.
A non-profit, Elkhart-based organization just developed a system that can track via satellite when water pumps in villages have malfunctioned and they’re the first group in the world to successfully get the job done.
“People had been climbing down in the shallow hole, filling up a pale, and handing the water out and this was causing illnesses, especially among kids,” said Cody Hall, Production Engineer SonSet Solutions.
Cody Hall and seven others working at SonSet Solutions in Elkhart developed the satellite-based technology that monitors water pumps that serve third world countries.
“Alright, if we can monitor these pumps and water sources remotely things let us know that pumps have gone down and that they need attention,” said Hall.
The non-profit organization is now using this unique monitoring system in 14 different countries.
“We actually walked and saw their previous water source and it was a shallow, maybe 6 or 8 feet deep with the puddle of water in there. There was stuff floating in the water you can't see through it,” said Hall.
They’re tracking the data of those pumps and making sure they don’t stop providing the much needed clean water.
“A large percentage of pumps fail but there's no way to know that they failed,” said Hall.
That is unless you go out and check them, which is why SonSet is so critical. Its monitors can detect a malfunction and then sonset is able to contact a crew on the ground to help.
“So far we received about 44,000 messages from the field of what these pumps are doing out there,” said Stephen Peacock, Manufacturing Engineer, SonSet Solutions.
Now, the team is responsible for completely transforming entire villages.
“Before everybody had these mud homes, and now everybody has brick homes and everybody has these big gardens that they didn't have before. You see the difference and transformation that water has made,” said David Palmer, Production Engineer at SonSet Solutions.
And they’re creating that success by creating more.
“The very first thing they need is clean water once they start with clean water everything else trickles on in a good way from there so we celebrate world water day,” said Peacock.
The group says they’ve sold about 200 of those water monitoring systems so far and they plan to continue their distribution helping as many as 500 people at one time in a village.