Microcomputer brings water data to cell phone

Andreas Scharf, a com­put­er sci­ence stu­dent from Coburg, uses micro­com­put­ers to net­work ele­vat­ed tanks in the water indus­try. This is how he became a com­pa­ny founder in Low­er Fran­co­nia. Water is one of the most pre­cious resources of the blue plan­et. Today, the water­works of cities and munic­i­pal­i­ties mea­sure all rel­e­vant data in their plants to ensure sup­ply and qual­i­ty, and this is now most­ly done dig­i­tal­ly. How­ev­er, only sta­tion­ary on site. Not networked.

“Peo­ple con­trol their cof­fee machine and the light via cell phone. But for the com­mu­ni­ty’s ele­vat­ed tank, which stores the drink­ing water and cost a few mil­lion euros: There’s no prop­er app for that!”

- Andreas Scharf

The stu­dent found it unbe­liev­able that a water cus­to­di­an can’t see the sta­tus online at any time. So he devel­oped an afford­able, mod­ern solu­tion for munic­i­pal­i­ties him­self. That was the basis for found­ing his com­pa­ny frapp.

Waterworks all over the world

In addi­tion to his stud­ies at Coburg Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences, Scharf worked at Energie- und Wass­er-Tech­nolo­gie EnWaT, a water sys­tem builder based in Stet­tfeld, Fran­co­nia (Haßberge dis­trict), whose cus­tomers include indus­tri­al com­pa­nies and munic­i­pal­i­ties all over the world — with dif­fer­ent, very indi­vid­ual needs, focus­es and prob­lems. Is there a leak some­where, did the refill­ing dur­ing the night per­haps not work out? What is the water lev­el right now? Or a ques­tion that is par­tic­u­lar­ly cru­cial for health depart­ments: What is the tem­per­a­ture devel­op­ment? To check some­thing like this, there is often only one option: get in the car and dri­ve to the ele­vat­ed tank. At EnWaT, the dig­i­tal­iza­tion of water treat­ment and sup­ply sys­tems has been dis­cussed in a very inno­v­a­tive way, Scharf explains. “It’s not that there are no apps at all. For exam­ple, the major con­trol sys­tem man­u­fac­tur­ers offer soft­ware to visu­al­ize the data. But then what does it mean when a curve breaks in? That’s what munic­i­pal­i­ties need.” And that was Schar­f’s approach: “I’ll put the data on your phone and also tell you what you can do with it.”

Applied science

He taught him­self the basics of pro­gram­ming as a teenag­er. “There was a book on Java lying around at home — I tried that out.” Back then, he went to Realschule, then switched to FOS, grad­u­at­ed from high school in 2018, and start­ed his bach­e­lor’s degree in com­put­er sci­ence at Coburg Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences right after that. As part of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Sys­tems event, Scharf attend­ed an IoT work­shop with Prof. Dr. Matthias Mörz and dealt with the very top­ic that the water­works are miss­ing. IoT, the Inter­net of things, makes it pos­si­ble to net­work phys­i­cal and vir­tu­al objects.

So, for exam­ple, the high water tank and the app on the cell phone. Mörz likes his stu­den­t’s solu­tion: “It’s just nice to see how he lives the basic idea of applied sci­ence,” says the pro­fes­sor. The tech­nol­o­gy of Schar­f’s “HBBox” for ele­vat­ed tank dig­i­ti­za­tion con­sists in par­tic­u­lar of a cir­cuit board that trans­lates infor­ma­tion from exist­ing indus­tri­al sen­sors for micro­com­put­ers. It allows the data to be stored in a cloud via cel­lu­lar or the free wire­less stan­dard LoRaWan and, for exam­ple, a push mes­sage pops up in the app when spe­cial events occur. “The munic­i­pal­i­ty has access to the data at all times — regard­less of where the employ­ees are. Irreg­u­lar­i­ties can be detect­ed right away,” says Mörz. Dig­i­ti­za­tion helps pre­vent water losses.

High water tank in your pocket

The high water tank in Schar­f’s home munic­i­pal­i­ty, for exam­ple, is ful­ly net­worked. Scharf can access it from Coburg. He looks at his cell phone, frowns “There’s a lot going out right now for the noon hour. Maybe a fire call.” In any case, the water­works knows: what flows when is absolute­ly trans­par­ent in Stet­tfeld. Scharf brought the ele­vat­ed tank into his back pock­et. EnWaT, the com­pa­ny where he got a lot of input on plant tech­nol­o­gy as a work­ing stu­dent, is now his cus­tomer, and so Schar­f’s dig­i­ti­za­tion tech­nol­o­gy was also used dur­ing the floods in the Ahr Val­ley in 2021, when the com­pa­ny deployed a mobile water­works in a ship­ping con­tain­er there. Scharf found­ed his own com­pa­ny, frapp, in 2020. He shrugs his shoul­ders: “The first Coro­na sum­mer. You did­n’t have much else to do then.” He was 19 at the time. Today, he’s think­ing about oth­er fields of appli­ca­tion for his HBBox: “We can dig­i­tize not only in the area of drink­ing water. I could also cov­er sewage treat­ment plants.”