Most homes have a 'stop cock' or 'shut off' valve for the water coming into the home. It is used to isolate the water supply when leaks/floods are detected or when plumbing work is being done in the home.
It is possible to buy electronic shut off valves that can be remotely controlled by an app or other user interfaces and in an ideal world the shut off valve would be automatically activated on detection of a leak or flood. This will only work well if there are enough flood/leak sensors installed and they are also installed in ALL the right locations.
It is for this reason that we have developed the Smartisant flood/leak sensor. It is a low-cost, extremely reliable sensor for new builds and can also be retro-fitted into existing buildings. It is easily interfaced to many things including legacy alarm panels and our own contextual smart home.
Electronic shut off valves basically come in two forms. Very few are battery powered due to the higher torque and power demands required to close a water valve.
Our contextual smart home models water as an object type 'Appliance' (because it is the shut off valve that is being controlled and not the water itself, which would be of object type 'Service') and makes it very easy to configuration permissions based on users and their roles. This means certain members of our family can turn off the water, using the connected shut off valve. Because we use technology abstraction it doesn't matter which brand or model of shut off valve we use.
We have developed our own smart shut-off valve based around an standard 'off the shelf' quality ball lever valve.
Our @smartest_home will tweet when our smart shut off valves are operated.
