We were challenged to reduce behavioral water waste in the shower.

So we cut water use in half.

Clockwise from top: two ways of installing Trickle (green button decreases flowrate, red increases), electronics 'packaged' in housing, housing with electronics removed (servo and ball valve inside)

Clockwise from top: two ways of installing Trickle (green button decreases flowrate, red increases), electronics 'packaged' in housing, housing with electronics removed (servo and ball valve inside)

This project received the Henry O. Fuchs Design Excellence award from the Stanford Department of Mechanical Engineering in 2015. 

Trickle was created with a team of four in Spring 2015 for ME113: Mechanical Engineering Design. We surveyed over 100 people about their shower habits and discovered that a high water flow rate was needed for only 1/3 of the showering time, primarily to rinse. We designed and built a device that enabled our users to easily switch between two configurable flow rates: one for rinsing, and one for staying warm while doing [insert shower activity here].

The user switches between flow rates by waving their hand above their head, in front of the height-configurable IR sensor. Both the high and low flow rate settings are adjusted to the user's liking with two flow trim buttons. The device also features a bluetooth transceiver, which enabled us to output flow rate data for each of our 20+ user test showers, providing the data presented below, and proving our concept.  

Clockwise from top right: Trickle mounted to existing shower hardware, CAD of final 3D printed housing for critical components, prototype to prove servo-ball valve functionality. 

Clockwise from top right: Trickle mounted to existing shower hardware, CAD of final 3D printed housing for critical components, prototype to prove servo-ball valve functionality.