IMLYS, the Intelligence Monitor Liquid System, is an IoT water-quality monitor we built at Kolej Matrikulasi Johor in 2022. We were three, team Triple H: me, Haziq Tajuddin, and Haziq Farhat, mentored by Ts Siti Nordianah binti Hai Nom. This is the earliest project on this site, from before my degree, and the one that started everything.
The problem
A farmer drawing from a river or a pond has no easy way to know whether that water is safe for crops. Checking pH means a meter, a trip to the source, and a log book, so mostly it does not happen. We wanted the water source to report on itself.
How the device works
IMLYS floats on the water. A pH sensor reads the source, a solar panel keeps it powered, and an ESP8266 pushes every reading to Blynk, a free app on the farmer's phone, in real time. The whole build cost RM216.40.
My teammates owned the design lane, from the hand sketches to the 3D model of the float body. Mine were the circuit and the schematic, the system code, and the testing.
Five waters
We took IMLYS to five sources: Air Terjun Bekok, Sungai Segamat, the lake at our college, Air Terjun Gunung Ledang, and distilled water as the control, three readings each. Bekok averaged pH 7.23, Segamat 6.95, the lake 5.65, Gunung Ledang 5.36, and the control 7.00. We concluded that 6.8 to 7.5 is the safe range for agricultural use, which made two of our five sources too acidic to use straight.
What it won
IMLYS took Platinum in the STEM Creator category at MASCAR 2022, the national Matriculation STEM Carnival, held 23 to 25 September 2022. It also took Gold at IRCIE 2022, an international innovation competition, and Gold at HIKMJ 2022, our college's innovation day. That same September, the college started a copyright notification for IMLYS with MyIPO.
Where it stands
The prototype stayed at the college and the team went separate ways after matriculation. What survived is the habit IMLYS taught me: build the thing, test it against the real world, and show the numbers.