This April, Arrow will be choosing another flash funding recipient from among the Arrow Certified campaigns on the crowdfunding site Indiegogo. The most recent award winner was WaterBot, which received $75,000 dollars in addition to Arrow resources and expertise to help launch their innovative smart water-quality monitoring system.
The Flint, Michigan water crisis has brought the importance of water quality to the forefront of national attention. Water quality is often something we take for granted until contamination occurs, and by then it’s too late. Each time a contamination event occurs it causes us to question what rules and regulations are in place to purify what we drink. Can we be sure that our water is really clean?
Chris Richter of WaterBot has been working diligently to answer this question for decades. His father started a water treatment company in 1982 and Chris eventually followed in his footsteps. The longer he worked in water treatment, the more that lingering, ever-questioning issue of water safety weighed on his brain. He’d regularly walk into homes where parents had bought a drinking system to protect their kids, but it wasn’t working and they had no way of knowing. That’s not right. If a parent is trying, someone should be there to help. He realized if he ever wanted to truly know the quality of water he was drinking, he’d have to find a way to guarantee it himself, and the idea for WaterBot was born.
Chris and his father Bob Richter, along with engineer Edgar Duarte went to work creating a small, real-time water quality monitor that they could connect to their own water supply. It wasn’t long until they were forced to put it to the test. Mere months after they first started work, Chris was notified that construction nearby had compromised his water supply. His prototype showed a 40% increase in debris in a matter of minutes. All three men realized then how important WaterBot was, and they became determined to take it to market.
The WaterBot team was optimistic that their product had an audience, but they weren’t sure how to reach them, and they weren’t familiar with the production side of consumer technology. That’s why they chose to take their project to Indiegogo’s crowdfunding platform and get it certified by Arrow.
“Our decision came down to one thing, a really optimistic, hopeful dream, and that one thing was Arrow. I know a whole heck about water, but hardware is not my expertise. And the inclusion of a major hardware vendor, that was absolutely one of the big decisions to go Indiegogo versus anything else,” says Chris.
The Arrow Certification process brought WaterBot face to face with expert Arrow engineers where it was evaluated from ideation through distribution. Chris describes “a completely unexpected level of support” from Arrow and speaks of Arrow engineers that were eager to help him surmount problems in design and application as they arose.
In addition to Arrow expertise, Arrow leveraged its industry leading expertise in supply chain to help source potential components for WaterBot and make optimizing adjustments to the WaterBot BoM. Analog Devices provides the power management, data converter, OP Amp, analog switch and data isolation components that enable an accurate and low power measurement solution. TE Connectivity's resistor and connector portfolio guarantees product reliability and precision through tight tolerance restrictions, ideal material selection, and superior product technology. And the IBM Bluemix platform gives WaterBot the cloud based application management it needs to do its job: give you real-time water quality data, right out of the tap.
Chris says that Arrow’s component sourcing expertise offered the WaterBot team “Reliable suppliers, precision that is absolutely staggering in terms of the measurement coming out of the device, and they’ve driven our costs down.” With Arrow behind them, they no longer were kept up at night worrying about component shortages or supply chain issues.
With Arrow’s help, WaterBot has a production-ready prototype completed. WaterBot took advantage of Arrow’s connections to manufacturing services, which facilitate the entire handoff from production ready to delivery. “I have very little concern when they [Arrow advisers] say it’s worth trying something, because they’ve been right every time,” Chris says.
And now, Arrow has awarded $75,000 in flash funding to the WaterBot team to launch their product nationwide.
“These funds are dramatically altering the scale that we are delivering on. This is going to allow us to go even bigger and better to market in terms of quantity of devices,” says Chris.
Chris and the WaterBot team are closer than ever before to their goal of bringing water quality regulation from an individual level all the way to a national level, through private-public collaboration between city officials, private water treatment companies and consumers. By leveraging the IoT capabilities of open source WaterBots across the country, cities and counties will be able to see exactly what their water supply looks like, and know when it changes. They’ll be able to allocate funds and manpower more efficiently in the case of disruptions and get an overall clearer picture of water quality nationwide.
In just six months Waterbot transformed from a makeshift device and a vision to a fully sourced and connected IoT product that can change the way this country looks at water. If you’re looking to take your technology idea to the next level, get your Indiegogo campaign Arrow Certified. Arrow continues to flash fund Arrow Certified campaigns every month, and yours could be next.