Uhome's True Wireless Valve Cuts the Water Automatically to Save Your Smart Home From Leaks

Ukrainian smart home specialist Uhome is looking to launch a crowdfunding campaign for a wire-free valve system designed to automatically switch off a water supply line in the event of a leak or other incident — integrating nicely into existing smart home platforms like Home Assistant.

"True Wireless Valve (TWV) from Uhome offers a completely wireless experience while operating on battery power and reducing installation complexity, cost, and safety concerns," Uhome's Dmytro Kostyria and Oleksiy Bolshov explain. "Additionally, TWV enables smart monitoring of a manually operated valve. Its seamless integration with Home Assistant and compatibility with the Zigbee2MQTT standard overcomes limitations often found in other water management devices, offering you more flexibility and control."

The TWV hardware is based around a custom circuit board housing a Holyiot nRF52840 module with ceramic antenna, itself built around the Nordic Semiconductor system-on-chip of the same name. That gives it a single-core 32-bit Arm Cortex-M4F processor running at up to 64MHz and a 2.4GHz radio module with Bluetooth 5 and IEEE 802.15.4 support — the latter currently compatible with Thread and Zigbee networks, the company confirms, with a firmware upgrade to Matter support in the works.

To this, Uhome has added a Texas Instruments DRV8838 H-bridge motor driver — chosen for an extremely low power draw while in sleep mode, to hit a two-year battery life from four AAA batteries — and a motor which automatically turn a valve when triggered by a leak detector or other automation. For installation, two variants have been designed: one which includes its own ball valve, and another which clamps onto a pipe's existing valve.

"The version equipped with a clamp is especially convenient," Kostyria and Bolshov claim, "as it can be attached directly to your existing plumbing setup without the need for a plumber or the hassle of removing the current valve. This design not only simplifies the installation process but also retains the manual functionality of your valve. For a blend of manual and smart control, you can operate TWV using its lever, just like a traditional valve, but with the added benefit of feedback to Home Assistant.

"TWV also supports Zigbee2MQTT integration. It excels in providing real-time feedback and displaying the current status of the valve, whether you operate it manually or through the web interface."

The project is due to crowdfund mass production via Crowd Supply in the near future, with interested parties able to sign up to be notified when the campaign goes live; the project's source code and hardware design files, meanwhile, are available on GitHub under an unspecified license.