[–] chrisrichter ago
Hi there, I'm Chris, one of the founders on that project. While the prototype leveraged the pi, that's a little different than production at scale but the concept is substantially similar.
At an industrial level, we're getting into fractions of a mS for desired sensitivity. That's a lot of incremental cost at low value for a residential use. We can minimize sensitivity-driven volatility (still a small %) by looking at the moving average. We're getting a lot of data points. So the trend is worth far more than the instantaneous read. The sensor itself isn't any more or less accurate than the existing handheld device that I carry into a home. The biggest differences being the persistent data collection over your water with that data also populating a central db covering kind of all of our water.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that your "provide a hell of a hammer" brought a pretty solid grin to my face. That's not the intent. It should actually help the water utilities. For those who turn a blind eye, yeah, there's a stick with that carrot too.