Pedreiro’s wife, Ana, works for a utility in California, and with the state in the midst of a drought, ways of encouraging water conservation were top of mind. Then one day in 2014, he told a college friend, Nelson Pedreiro, about his project.
So DeCamargo built many of the gadgets he needed from scratch, including circuit boards for his hub and gateways to connect sensors for temperature, humidity, lighting, and motion-including the opening and closing of a pet door. He kept his hands in engineering as a hobby, and, about seven years ago, decided to automate his home as much as he possibly could.Īt the time, Alexa was still a baby and home automation a patchwork industry. Marcelo DeCamargo began his career as an electrical engineer in Brazil, eventually moving into management and to the United States. At least, that’s the promise made to me by Marcelo DeCamargo, founder of Nudge Systems, and one of the designers of the device I just tucked into the ground, the Pleco. I replace the lid.įrom now on, I will be able to know about every drop of water that flows in my house, and exactly in what way many of those drops are being used, by checking my phone. For a moment, I wonder what my meter reader is going to think about all this, but then reason that, living in Silicon Valley, he must be used to odd gadgets. I nestle a plastic canister, containing batteries and electronics, in the dirt next to it and pull up an antenna almost to ground level.
There’s not a lot of room in there, but enough for me to easily strap what looks like a giant fitness monitor, stretchy band and all, around the meter. I’d never really looked inside this underground box before it’s not as grimy as I thought it would be, though there are a few cobwebs that I clear away. I brush some dead leaves from the top of the slab of cement that covers my curbside water meter and pry it off with a long screwdriver.
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