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[–] karaz ago 

Alright, i'm no expert on the topic, just a hobbyist that likes dabbling with raspberry pi. Looks like a Pi in a regular casing you can buy for a couple of bucks. Not sure whether this particular product is any good obviously, but i don't see why it wouldn't be possible. It's basically the same thing as the custom pi powered weather stations. You have a number of sensors connected to it and a script handling the input.

We have objective ways to determine quality of water - mineral composition, organisms floating about, that sort of stuff. It definitely isn't a new tech either, just connected to a computer that collects all the data.

The basic premise seems quite positive. Surely most drinking water in first world countries that's designated as safe is, but mistakes happen, this would have caught it earlier and alert you to any possible quality issues that you might have instantly. That and a collective database of hundreds or thousands of devices from a negatively affected region would provide a hell of a hammer should the water company or anyone else responsible want to sweep the decline of quality under the rug.

As far as efficiency and accuracy is concerned - hard to say. The pi they use, more than capable of crunching the input, the sensors are a different story. There absolutely are ones capable of extremely precise measurements already available, but as with everything, there are grades to it. If they throw in the cheapest sensors they can find the results wont be very accurate.

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[–] 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.