HomeNews
NewsWater in Mexico

‘TlalocBox’ could streamline monitoring of Mexico’s water supply

Felicity Bradstock
By Felicity Bradstock
6
IPN students
Eduardo Rodrigo Cruz Figueroa and Andrés Jalpilla López, two telematics students at IPN, created the TlalocBox prototype. (IPN)

The National Polytechnic Institute’s (IPN) new water quality monitoring prototype, known as the TlalocBox, could help improve Mexico’s water supply by measuring the purity of cistern water in real time, the institute announced on Sunday. 

The TlalocBox, named for the Aztec rain god, was developed to detect contaminants in Mexico’s water, such as heavy metals, industrial chemicals and agricultural waste, thereby helping to prevent disease and environmental damage.

Tlaloc Box
The TlalocBox is designed to prevent the water sample being tested from leaking into the electronic components, while sensors send data directly to a special platform that gives results almost immediately. (IPN)

Eduardo Rodrigo Cruz Figueroa and Andrés Jalpilla López, two telematics students from the Interdisciplinary Professional Unit in Engineering and Advanced Technologies (UPIITA), created the prototype, a hermetic box with a system that can be used to monitor the temperature, acidity or alkalinity (pH) and turbidity of a water supply. 

The device has three sensors, operates using an Arduino microcontroller — an open-source electronics platform — and is powered by a portable rechargeable battery. 

“The box is specially designed to prevent water from leaking and damaging electronic components, while identifying the presence of contaminants,” Cruz Figueroa explained in an IPN press release. Unlike the technologies currently used to monitor Mexico’s water supply, which require the collection of samples that take several days to analyze, the TlalocBox provides almost immediate results thanks to its use of an Internet of Things system. 

It connects to SigFox — a low-power global network — and sends small amounts of data over long distances to a platform. 

“We programmed the Arduino board so that, once it obtains information from the sensors, it sends the data through the SigFox network to a platform called ThingSpeak, available to end users with very simple interpretation via mobile apps or PCs,” said Jalpilla López.

The students also developed a web and mobile application where data is updated every 15 minutes. The app features a traffic light system, with green indicating that water quality is acceptable, yellow representing average quality and red meaning high contamination. 

The IPN project aligns with President Claudia Sheinbaum’s water policy, which aims to improve the quality of Mexico’s water supply. 

With reports from La Jornada

6 COMMENTS

Have something to say? Paid Subscribers get all access to make & read comments.
CAZZU

From celebrity custody battle to Congress: Cazzu’s Law seeks to prevent absent parents from blocking children’s travel

Gabriela Solís - 1
Requiring both parents to approve their child's travel is meant to prevent parental kidnapping. But it is often used by absent fathers to control both their child and ex.
street dog curled up next to a mexican road in morelos

After a Mexico City suburb euthanized 11,000 street dogs, Sheinbaum demands a review

Tom Buckley - 0
The former mayor of Tecamac, México state, now a federal senator, authorized the killings from 2019 to 2023, saying the dogs were in "deplorable" health or proven dangerous.
Volunteers clean tar from a Veracruz beach

After weeks of denials, Pemex admits responsibility for Gulf Coast oil spill

Tom Buckley - 2
Three high-ranking officials have now been fired over the cover-up, and a complaint was submitted to the Federal Attorney General’s Office to determine criminal liability.
BETA Version - Powered by Perplexity

VIDEO OF THE WEEK