CWA Innovator Spotlight: IoT Sensing and Monitoring

[00:00:00] Dorothy Baunach: So I'm Dorothy Baunach. I'm the entrepreneur in residence from the Cleveland Water Alliance, and delighted to welcome you all to the second innovator spotlight from the Cleveland Water Alliance CWA. And also very excited for you to learn more about our guests today, who are taking advantage of Cleveland Water Alliance's capabilities with.

[00:00:35] Dorothy Baunach: Internet of Things and our telemetry network that covers a good portion of the Lake Erie Watershed, which I'll tell you more about in just a second.

[00:00:49] Dorothy Baunach: We would like to thank our sponsor, Badger Meter, who has sponsored the entire Innovator Spotlight series and we're very grateful to them for their support. And I hope that you will reach out to them. If you would like to know more about Badger Meter. they're a very exciting company up in the Milwaukee area that's been inventive for more than a hundred years.

[00:01:16] Dorothy Baunach: As mentioned, I'm Dorothy Baunach, the entrepreneur resident for the Cleveland Water Alliance. I've been affiliated with the organization for a long time and very excited to be part of the team that talks to innovators from all over the world that have not only sensors and devices that use our IoT telemetry device, but all kinds of applications for the water industry in wastewater treatment, water purification, and industrial applications as well.

[00:01:47] Dorothy Baunach: Cleveland Water Alliance has been around for about 10 years, and one of our most exciting programs is our test bed. As I mentioned, this test bed covers more than 7,000 square miles of the Lake Erie Watershed on the southern shore. And we test devices from all over the world, about a dozen to 20 devices annually for the last three years.

[00:02:15] Dorothy Baunach: And we have IoT devices that are put onto sonde every year sent out to the lake. Sometimes we test in watersheds along the shore. But, one of the things that we'd like to know is, are you using IoT enabled sensing and monitoring devices in your current operation? And, learn a little bit more about you and the audience that we're talking to this morning about the internet of things.

[00:02:47] Dorothy Baunach: It looks like everyone is familiar and somewhat, using the IoT enabled devices, but not, but not everyone. So let's, let's move further in and see how we can help you understand and get more, more familiar with IoT and what it can offer in terms of sensing wallet, water quality devices.

[00:03:17] Dorothy Baunach: With our watershed, we are now the most connected watershed in the world with our Lake Erie sensing. And let me stop talking and get to our panelists. First we have Ed Rudberg from Nucleic Sensing Systems, NS2. And Ed's gonna talk a little bit more about his DNA sensing devices, a genetic smoke alarm for water.

[00:03:46] Dorothy Baunach: I love that. Ed, on your website and hoping that you can tell us more. And our third question, and we'll end that poll and turn this over to Ed in just a minute. it looks like. Everyone is not familiar with you, Ed. So with that, let us have you tell people more about, NS2 and what you've been doing to help detect organisms in water.

[00:04:16] Ed Rudberg: Well, thanks so much Dorothy. Really appreciate the introduction. As Dorothy noted, my name's Ed Rudberg. I'm the CEO of Nucleic Sensing Systems, and we're developing the world's first autonomous and continuous biosensor for the detection of what's called environmental DNA. And many of y'all are probably familiar with environmental DNA.

[00:04:36] Ed Rudberg: Every species alive from viruses to whales sheds DNA into the environment. I'm sure many of us know that the dust in our home is largely made of skin cells, and what we are developing is a technology that can autonomously and continuously detect that DNA that's left in the environment. As a society, we are facing environmental and HAB catastrophes and, and really economic hardships without the real time detection and ongoing monitoring of biological species of concern.

[00:05:10] Ed Rudberg: We do a really good job at measuring physical and chemical parameters in waters or otherwise, whether that's temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, et cetera. You know, there's, there's a bunch of IoT sensors for that, but where we really are lacking is in that. Biology sensing the IoT sensing around biology, whether it's in our, you know, natural resources in oceans where invasive species cost the world's economy in excess of $400 billion per year.

[00:05:37] Ed Rudberg: Or in animal health where disease costs aquaculture producers, so in excess of $5 billion per year, more in water and wastewater. We have, you know, a lot of concerns over legionella disease and wastewater treatment we know is notoriously inefficient. but even in biomanufacturing where we create little ecosystems in, in vessels, those are inherently inefficient processes and, and really put that industry at risk.

[00:06:05] Ed Rudberg: We can go to the next slide. So what we are creating is what we're calling, the tracker. It's a device that what we've done is essentially taken a human health diagnostic tool, and taken it into a box and put it into the field. I know we've all remembered times in which we were swabbing our noses for COVID, right?

[00:06:27] Ed Rudberg: And, and you either had COVID or you don't. What our technology uses is a technology called droplet digital PCR. So what we're essentially doing is. Swabbing the environment's nose, if you will, 20 thousand times in a single sample. So we get a bunch of ones and zeros that come out. Either it had the DNA in the subsample or it didn't.

[00:06:50] Ed Rudberg: And what that allows us to do is quantify environmental DNA in the field and we can show most importantly changes over time and we can do so without a human. It's kind of that set it and forget it, if you will, of biological monitoring. And right now we can detect up to three species at the same time. And our goal is to automate processes, particularly like wastewater, biomanufacturing, or aquaculture, so that they can use our technology and our data that we develop to drive automation via machine learning.

[00:07:24] Ed Rudberg: Go to the next slide. So, when we look at the target molecule that we look at, there's a few different types of what we call environmental DNA and there's what is typically looked for. Many of you all probably have done environmental DNA sampling. You take a large water sample, you know, you dip it in the water, put it through a filter, and what comes out is what's is tested.

[00:07:53] Ed Rudberg: It's cell associated DNA, it's, it's the cells that stick to that filter. That's really because it's easily stabilized. And as we move forward, there's also particle associated, so a cell lysis in the field and in water, and the DNA sticks to particulates. And that is also the type of DNA that's often sampled, but we're looking at something totally different.

[00:08:19] Ed Rudberg: It's called free environmental, DNA or an RNA. And why it's not usually looked at is because it's super short-lived. So cells typically lyce in the environment, that DNA comes out and it gets chewed up by bacteria because it ends up becoming food. And what that allows us to do is take out a couple of the steps and really automate the process by not needing to lyce the sample, but it also can show us that an organism was most likely alive.

[00:08:46] Ed Rudberg: Or we can look at RNA, which means it was, making proteins still, or, or even viruses. And that's really what we're looking at. We can go to the next slide. So here's an example of the type of data that we can collect. So this is in Lake Mead, working with a national Park service, starting at site one, nearshore environment.

[00:09:10] Ed Rudberg: Many, you all are familiar with Quagga and Zebra mussels. they like to attach to rocks and surfaces, and so near the. Sure you would expect there to be a high concentration of environmental DNA for Quagga and Zebra mussels. But as you get towards, the middle of the reservoir, you see that, precipitously drop, and, and be less concentrated.

[00:09:32] Ed Rudberg: But then as you come into the marina where you have well docks and, and boats and all these types of things that zebra mussels can, live on, you see a much higher concentration of Quagga and Zebra muscle DNA. And go on to the next slide. You can also take that data and it looks like this, so rather than you know, that typical, Hey, we're looking for environmental DNA.

[00:09:57] Ed Rudberg: It either has the Species we're looking for, it doesn't. What's really important about environmental DNA and digital droplet PCR is that it is really robust against what we call inhibition, which means, oh, you got dirty water. It's tough to detect the environmental DNA, or in this case, you might have gasoline, one of the big inhibitors for looking for an environmental DNA.

[00:10:22] Ed Rudberg: And so what we're looking at here is how brightly those tiny little droplets. Glow to show that you do indeed have environmental DNA there. And you can see there's a wide range, right? There's the very, the ones that are very tall and green and, and the ones that are much shorter. But because of just the inherent technology with Drop digital PCR, we're able to set what is a positive and what is a negative so we can really delineate and make sure that we are.

[00:10:52] Ed Rudberg: Quantifying that environmental DNA correctly. And what you're seeing here is, is before decontamination at a recreational vessel getting sprayed down with hot water decontamination, and then you see the water coming off of it afterwards. So we're not only showing the efficacy of, of decontamination efforts, but also our ability to differentiate those positives and negatives in a, in a very dirty, if you will, environment.

[00:11:20] Ed Rudberg: And we can go on to the next slide. The other great thing about droplet digital PCR and why it's so great for environmental DNA is that needle in a haystack. Droplet Digital PCR is great for finding very small amounts of environmental DNA in the field. And for those that work with environmental DNA, you really understand that often, what you're looking for is,  

[00:11:46] Ed Rudberg: Protected species, or you name it, it's just not a highly occurring molecule. But what we're finding specifically with the three environmental DNA is within one 20,001, excuse me, 20 microliter sample. We're finding the concentration of free environmental DNA akin to cell associated or particle associated whe in five liters of water.

[00:12:11] Ed Rudberg: So 20 microliters having a representative sample of five liters. So really big difference there in just the abundance of that molecule. The other thing we can do is show changes in the amount of biology over time. So this is an example of some data that we've collected from Pacific Seafood. They were interested in columnaris disease.

[00:12:33] Ed Rudberg: A very common, in the water column when you're looking at salmonid, aquaculture. and they're not worried about positives and negatives. And the reason being is, is common disease is omnipresent. So if we would look and typically say, Hey, yep. One or zero, it's there, or it's not, that's not very valuable to that customer and to, to many customers, looking for something that's always there, they're far more interested in a change in that genetic concentration over time.

[00:13:03] Ed Rudberg: So that is another way of showing the data called histogram, which I'm sure many of you are all familiar with, where we see the positives on the right, the negatives on the left, and then we can. Take those samples as often as every 15 minutes. So if there was a sample of concern, everybody knows, you know, with your phone how you can do fast photos, right?

[00:13:22] Ed Rudberg: You hold on, it takes a bunch of pictures at the same time. That's essentially what we can do. So testing every 15 minutes, to have that confirmatory analysis, with that you need including, you know, onboard positive and negative controls. So with that, Dorothy, that's a pretty good background on, on our technology and, and what we're doing.

[00:13:44] Ed Rudberg: I think I'll turn it back over to you and Chris.

[00:13:47] Dorothy Baunach: Thanks so much, Ed. That was interesting and very exciting and takes me back to my biology days. So, it's, let's, let's turn to Chris. who is the CEO of AquaRealTime. Chris also has a track. Tracker the algae tracker device. And, his focus is a little bit different with harmful algal blooms.

[00:14:10] Dorothy Baunach: And we know that we have harmful algal blooms that plague Lake Erie, and many lakes around the country and small bodies of water. So, Chris, let's turn to you and see what you're doing with your tracker.

[00:14:26] Chris Lee: Thank you, Dorothy. My name is Chris and, I'm the co-founder and CEO at AquaRealTime.

[00:14:36] Chris Lee: next slide. So, many of you're probably familiar with, multi parameter sonde systems. These are systems where you have multiple probes like PHDO chlorophyll that you plug into a sonde, and then you can assemble that into a larger buoy system. You could get solar panels and a telemetry system added into there and create a floating buoy that would.

[00:15:00] Chris Lee: Monitor a lot of different parameters. So, what we've developed, five or six years ago, is a system that's all in one. it's a complete system. You just take it out of the box. It is a buoy that tracks a lot of different parameters, but doesn't require any assembly. It already includes the cellular and all this other stuff.

[00:15:23] Chris Lee: so just taking a 30,000 foot view, of course, I think everyone knows the benefits of monitoring for algae, or other water quality parameters. We're not just focused on algae. Pretty much anything that drinking water and many of the things that waste water and recreational areas look at, we do, is to.

[00:15:46] Chris Lee: first of all, detect problems as early as possible. not detect them within a week or two. Detect them right as they're happening so that you can time the public warnings or do treatments or take other measures. In a lot of cases, people are limited with the amount of staff they can have. So this allows them to cover a lot more territory, have full lake or reservoir visibility at a fraction of the cost of either sampling or some of these larger buoy systems.

[00:16:19] Chris Lee: And if treatments are done, you can see whether or not they're working and prove that to important stakeholders. Next slide, please. So, a little bit of detail on what our algae tracker by default measures. So what you're seeing here on the right is the standard configuration without any added sensors, and that will measure the chlorophyll A for any kind of algae, the phycocyanin that's targeted to cyanobacteria or the potentially toxic algae.

[00:16:54] Chris Lee: turbidity water temperature, of course, solar light because that'll affect the growth of organisms, and then the GPS location is always live. We can add on sensors for pH dissolved oxygen, conductivity, and newly dissolved organic matter, UV245 and ORP, as part of our very expansive dashboard, we

[00:17:23] Chris Lee: Also pull air temperature, precipitation, wind direction and speed, so you have a big picture of what's going on. Measurements are taken every 30 minutes and they are uploaded to the dashboard automatically every two hours. next slide please. So a little closer up on how the thing works. We do have a solar panel on top, so that recharges an internal rechargeable battery.

[00:17:49] Chris Lee: So even if this device was without sun for up to two or three weeks, it would still be able to take its measurements and proceed. But with the solar panel, we're able to leave these out pretty much year round. If there's no ice, the limitation is if you're in a place where you're getting ice, you're probably gonna have to take it out in the winter.

[00:18:10] Chris Lee: The big differentiators, between our system and other sonde systems is that this one is completely turnkey. You take it out of the box, press the power button, and within five minutes you're getting readings on your cell phone. You know, any device. you don't have to set up cellular or power or anything like that.

[00:18:32] Chris Lee: The installation takes less than 15 minutes compared to, potentially several people a day or two, for some of the larger buoy systems, because it is a more cost effective solution, you can get full lake visibility. People are typically putting out three to five of these units rather than just one and not knowing where to put it.

[00:18:54] Chris Lee: You can have, basically, a lot of different locations. You can see on the bottom right, the Antifouling brush system that's there, that's a picture of the device upside down, floating in the water. You can see a lot of biofouling will develop on the device. But that window, which is the top part, that, that gets brushed, that will stay very clean in long-term deployments.

[00:19:19] Chris Lee: And that's the key to having a long-term, low maintenance device, is to have low biofouling and not have drift in those sensors. We do the brushing before each and every measurement, every 30 minutes, 48 times a day. And that does a really good job. next slide please. The other big differentiator for us is the dashboard.

[00:19:43] Chris Lee: So this is automatically included in the system. Our dashboard is by and large considered the best one of the competitors in this particular space. you have a live GPS map showing all your different devices with highlights of each one on the map. Email alerts at any action thresholds that you can define.

[00:20:06] Chris Lee: of course historical charts, over any timeframe up to a year. Even two. Color coded gauges that you can set the color of. Depending on the severity of the issue, they'll automatically switch from one mode regime to the other and then send you an email alert. and we have a lot of quality control data tools so you can manipulate.

[00:20:30] Chris Lee: The data you can remove spikes in environmental data. You typically get that you can download the data anytime. and we also have something called self health diagnostics. So if there isn't a problem with the device, you won't get any messages and you won't need to go do maintenance. But when there is a problem, we'll send you an email and then that's when you would do your maintenance.

[00:20:53] Chris Lee: We also have what's called an API integration. So for those who have a complex or an advanced software system that they use, and they wanna pull the data into that, whether that's, you know, a Lake Association that has their own website, or if it's a drinking water utility that has their own software, you can pull that data in directly.

[00:21:16] Chris Lee: Next slide, please. so this is some accuracy testing, done by an independent third party lab. The x axis is the exact true extracted data for both chlorophyll and phycocyanin. And the y axis is our sensor measurement. So a perfect sensor would be a perfectly straight line with an R squared of 1.0.

[00:21:40] Chris Lee: And you can see we're at 0.99 and with a very straight line. This is for live cyanobacteria, by the way. As opposed to, a synthetic rotamine solution where you can get more nines on that, r squared value. But now when you put this into a lake or a reservoir, there will be a degradation in the accuracy, but you'll still get a very good trend line showing what's going on over time.

[00:22:07] Chris Lee: Next slide. As far as installation, as I mentioned, it's a pretty quick installation. We provide what's called a rigging package. You can see here on the bottom right, there's a red ball buoy and then stainless steel cabling. So we provide everything up until the anchor itself. So you would need to provide any kind of fixed object.

[00:22:28] Chris Lee: But basically other than that, everything is taken care of. Just need to make sure you have a water depth of at least about two feet and to get sunlight for part of the day. Next slide, please. So I won't be able to go into the dashboard too much, but, happy to go into a demo with any people who are interested at a later date.

[00:22:53] Chris Lee: next slide please. As far as what the maintenance is, like I said before, we have self health diagnostics. We also have something, a weekly summary report email. so that's where you get a list of your devices, a list of various parameters you have. Did your chlorophyll values go higher than your alerts?

[00:23:14] Chris Lee: Was there any downtime of the device? That kind of thing. We have something called a preventive maintenance package, and most people opt for that. That's included in some of our plans where you can send the device back at the end of each year. And rather than have to do calibrations yourself and maintenance, we do a complete refurbishing of the device.

[00:23:35] Chris Lee: We recalibrate, clean it, open it up, take up, take out and replace any parts that need it, that kind of thing. Other than that, people are doing visits to do basic maintenance, as often as one month if their assets are really critical. but some people will basically go the whole season or even six months.

[00:23:55] Chris Lee: We have various ways of calibrating the data, believe it or not, remotely. so you can get reset points, where you calibrate to samples. next slide please. actually that's pretty much it. I was gonna do a case study, but I knew that there wasn't going to be enough time, so I passed on this one.

[00:24:18] Chris Lee: So thank you Dorothy.

[00:24:19] Dorothy Baunach: That's awesome Chris. Thanks so much and thanks to both of you for giving us this overview. Now we do want this to be an interactive session and we've left enough time for questions. Please use the question and answer function on your screen, to ask some questions and while the audience is doing that,

[00:24:38] Dorothy Baunach: I have a couple of questions that I'll start off with here. So one thing for Chris before you mute, I, you know, you've recently used the test bed, the Cleveland Water Alliance test bed that I've mentioned at the beginning. I think you've deployed for two years. And could you tell us a little bit about that experience and what you learned and how your device was, maybe we helped to validate that device for you?

[00:25:03] Dorothy Baunach: Could. Would you mind? Yeah, absolutely.

[00:25:05] Chris Lee: so it was placed in various locations in Lake Erie and Sandusky Bay and at a bridge, somewhere west of east of there. and yes, a couple years, so it was very good. Lake Erie can be a pretty challenging environment both from the aspect of waves and stormy weather, as well as biofouling.

[00:25:35] Chris Lee: You can get more, a little bit more there than in some cleaner lakes. not saying that Lake Erie is dirty or anything, but, there are some challenges. So, we at the time of those deployments, we've made some improvements to the tracker, partly due to that. So one thing that we did is we added the rigging packages so that.

[00:26:01] Chris Lee: In the past, the rigging was kind of left up to the customers and that made it challenging because you could easily make mistakes with how it's connected. So now we've replaced everything with large marine grade shackles, and stainless steel cabling and this extra ball buoy that makes it more visible in these locations.

[00:26:24] Chris Lee: and basically you just need to have that fixed asset that you connect it to. We've also added what's called the protective dome. So in the past, the device could flip over and stay upside down, and, and you'll be measuring air, which is obviously not a desirable thing. So we now have a dome version.

[00:26:45] Chris Lee: Well, all of our trackers are now domed. so they cannot stay upside down. We've also made improvements on all the connectors and basically ruggedized even more than it was before. And last we have a satellite version coming up here. We have what's called the Tracker XT.

[00:27:08] Chris Lee: So this is a version that will have satellite communications. You can put it anywhere in the world, including the middle of the ocean. absolutely no connectors on the outside, so there's no way for it to have any kind of issues with, you know, bouncing off things. basically an even more ruggedized version.

[00:27:28] Chris Lee: That's, and that was developed with funding from NOAA. In a grant. So, yeah, a lot of benefits from the test bed, and improvements to the platform as a result.

[00:27:45] Dorothy Baunach: Yes, we know Lake Erie. It can be challenging. If you're familiar with Lake Erie, it's the shallowest of the Great Lakes.

[00:27:50] Dorothy Baunach: And, those waves and storms can kick up pretty quickly. And we do have significant algae blooms in the lake that, given the number of people that rely on Lake Erie as a water source are very troubling in the summertime. And so this detection is very important. I'm gonna come back to you, Chris, a little bit on

[00:28:11] Dorothy Baunach: Maybe the interventions, but I wanna go to Ed because, one question, actually, I have two questions for you, Ed, and there's a few questions coming in online now too. So, my question to you is, what, how do you display your data and is there a data function where you're collecting this data to present to the customer?

[00:28:32] Dorothy Baunach: When, you know, when that's ready. And the second I'll save till I have the answer to that.

[00:28:38] Ed Rudberg: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks Dorothy. About, asking about data. exact same thing. We're pushing to a data platform. We wanna make it as easy for our customers as possible so they don't have to connect to the machine or, or anything else.

[00:28:53] Ed Rudberg: And we're connecting, you know, can connect Bluetooth, wifi, uh. Satellite. We're really agnostic when it comes to how you connect to the data. So it's really what's cheapest, best, and fastest for our customer so that it can get to that data platform as easily as possible.

[00:29:09] Dorothy Baunach: And given what you're measuring, it's really important that you can actually get that in real time, continuous measurement because, as you've said before, that data usually had to be collected, or the samples had to be collected, taken to a lab, and it would take days to get that information.

[00:29:27] Dorothy Baunach: And in days when you're talking about microorganisms, infecting water with, you know, with whatever's coming along these days, it's just. Easy and better to know it faster, rather than slower. And the fact that you can get so precise on those microorganisms with the DNA, analysis and RNA analysis is really exciting.

[00:29:51] Dorothy Baunach: So the other question, this is a bit of a setup as well, but you've just been accepted into the generator cohort for the current Great Lakes accelerator program. So please, give us some information on that and how you think it's gonna help you.

[00:30:09] Ed Rudberg: Yeah, absolutely. The team at Generator has been fantastic.

[00:30:13] Ed Rudberg: It's, it is a group that I've been in touch with for actually a couple of years and finally found the right match at the right time for us and. A, you know, the team is great and they're always, you know, willing and excited to make introductions and, and help you through the process. But we're midstream on, on what they call a mentor swarm.

[00:30:34] Ed Rudberg: So for three weeks straight, for three days a week, we are having essentially like round robin dating, if you will, where you have conversations with stakeholders with, potential venture capital firms with, you know, so many different people in the water space, in the Great Lakes. So, you know, I, I think when it's all said and done, we'll have over a hundred conversations.

[00:30:59] Ed Rudberg: And so if you are interested in the Great Lakes, if you have a technology that can be deployed in the Great Lakes or, or help the Great Lakes region, they are having additional cohorts. As they move through fall in the coming years, I would highly recommend to anyone that is interested in the Great Lakes that's interested in doing business in the Great Lakes and can have positive impacts on the Great Lakes region, particularly when it comes to water itself,

[00:31:26] Ed Rudberg: I would highly recommend putting in an application.

[00:31:29] Dorothy Baunach: Thanks so much, Ed and yes and thank you to Generator for putting this together. And, CWA is in partnership with the Generator team on this particular accelerator program. And, we're very excited because we know that conversations with customers and those that are interfacing with water every day and their needs are really important for entrepreneurs.

[00:31:55] Dorothy Baunach: So, we welcome the work that it takes by Generator and a company like NS2 to participate in these and take full advantage. Chris, just one last question. Nope, not, not for you. Here's one for both of you, and this is from the audience. So, do the sensors support LoRaWAN wireless connectivity, and I think maybe that came in for Chris, because this was while you were talking, Chris.

[00:32:30] Dorothy Baunach: So, do your sensors to support the LoRaWAN wireless connectivity, and I'll let you answer that.

[00:32:38] Chris Lee: Yeah. so we're using a platform that allows us to switch. between wifi, cellular, LoRaWAN and satellite. All of our devices so far that we've sold have been using the cellular platform.

[00:32:57] Chris Lee: But switching to the LoRaWAN is something that is, you know, we're just kind of waiting for the right moment to do it because we have the capability of doing that switch. The platform supports it. We just haven't sold them in that format yet. So, short answer is it's, it can be done quite doably, but it hasn't actually been done to date.

[00:33:24] Ed Rudberg: Dorothy, I'm happy to answer that question as well. It looks like it was for both. no, we we're, we're agnostic when it comes to how we push our data to the cloud. So, yeah, we absolutely can use the wireless connectivity Bluetooth, uh. Or satellite or, or otherwise. We realize that many of our customers won't have easy wifi connection.

[00:33:45] Ed Rudberg: Some of them will, but many of them, you know, will, will be satellite or otherwise. So we need to make sure that we can connect and get our technology to work with wherever the customer's needs are, as when it comes to that connectivity.

[00:34:02] Dorothy Baunach: CWAs network in Lake Erie is primarily a LoRaWAN network, but Chris, we were able to accommodate that, and we can also switch off to cellular, but it's really designed as a LoRaWAN network.

[00:34:18] Dorothy Baunach: So,

[00:34:19] Chris Lee: Yeah, no, LoRaWAN really makes sense in Lake Erie. specifically LoRaWAN because, I mean, you're gonna have, you may have a lot in a similar location, and you may have a lot of overlap between the stakeholders. So having one system with a bunch of gateways for LoRaWAN is definitely a good way to go.

[00:34:41] Dorothy Baunach: That's awesome. maybe, and I don't see any more questions. It looks like one more is coming in, but, I was gonna ask Ed, what, what other species are you looking to be able to identify and, you know, what's the next step for development to make sure that you're covering this

[00:35:02] Dorothy Baunach: infinite number of microorganisms that we're seeing, but to really tag those, those most important ones.

[00:35:09] Ed Rudberg: Yeah, so historically, this technology was originally invented at the University of Montana for Quagga and Zebra mussels. So, so that's a lot of the work that we had started with. But we realized as we commercialized the technology out of the laboratory, that there were a lot of other options.

[00:35:26] Ed Rudberg: Right now we’re working with NOAA on an SBIR3 project and the US Navy that's looking for bottlenose dolphin and human waste indicators. So there's a lot of opportunity out there, but where we're really looking for, hoping to have some pilots, in the near future this fall, water and wastewater, whether it's Legionella disease or you, you name it.

[00:35:49] Ed Rudberg: looking for bugs you want in wastewater or bugs that you don't want, for making these systems more efficient, because we're totally agnostic when it comes to the type of environmental DNA or RNA that we're looking for. We just need to make sure there's either primers and probes that are available and the commercial sites of IDT or otherwise, or if there is not, going to literature, scientific literature, and finding those unique genetic sequences to have a primary probe made.

[00:36:20] Dorothy Baunach: Very good, thank you. Yes, the possibilities are exciting and it never occurred to me back in the day when DNA and RNA PCR was introduced, for the detection that we would be seeing those uses in water as well as in humans. So it's exciting to see the evolution of that technology.

[00:36:45] Dorothy Baunach: Chris, I think this question is for you, but maybe for Ed as well, but, you mentioned the use of satellite as a way to collect the data and there was a question about power consumption, right? Satellite data. You wanna elaborate on that a little?

[00:37:01] Chris Lee: Yeah. so in the past when, when people were using satellite data, it was usually through a system called Iridium 

[00:37:08] Chris Lee: and there was a timing issue. You didn't know if you had the satellites above you and you may, maybe you had to wait. And that's a power problem 'cause you can't go to sleep. Nowadays, we've got way more satellites and the new systems that are right now, like in the last year and for the next two years, there's a big move to something called 

[00:37:30] Chris Lee: direct to cellular. So basically it's sort of overlapping satellite and cellular systems. And basically the bottom line is that there are effectively way more satellites to talk to. So the communication wait time is not there. not nearly as bad. So power should not be nearly as much of an issue as it was before.

[00:37:54] Chris Lee: And in our case, the size of our solar panel is five watts. It's overpowered. So we have more charging ability than we need now. So we have the ability to use more energy than we are using already. The other thing is, if there is a challenge, our system will automatically adjust.

[00:38:21] Chris Lee: So let's say if we're pushing data every two hours, we see that the battery strength is coming down to 60% instead of 85, where it likes to stay. Then we simply, we automatically reduce it to four hours or eight hours so we can adaptively adjust. That helps for northern climates and for situations where there's different weather patterns or, as we deploy things that may use a slightly larger amount of power.

[00:38:50] Dorothy Baunach: That's awesome. Thank you. We know the Cleveland Water Alliance is focused on Lake Erie and the Great Lakes, but outside of the Great Lakes Region. Where are you both using your tech? Both in the US or internationally? And Chris, since you're unmuted now, I'll, I'll go to you and then Ed, I’ll follow up with you.

[00:39:09] Chris Lee: so we have trackers, all over the US. I think definitely most states at this point, a lot of them in, I mean, it's, it's really spread out so. Certainly Florida, Colorado, California, New York, Massachusetts. a lot of places. Michigan. So then a lot in Canada as well. We're seeing a lot of market poll in the Maritimes.

[00:39:44] Chris Lee: In Canada, they're a bit earlier to the government has released a document saying, here's what we think the levels for chlorophyll and maybe not phycocyanin, but at least chlorophyll should be for these different types of waterways. So there's more guidance and both lake associations, recreational areas and drinking water utilities are turning to those government guidelines to

[00:40:09] Chris Lee: Try to implement and at least set up their monitoring ahead of time so that if treatment has to happen, they're ready. We also are selling in Europe to some extent. So Israel, we have quite a few units in Israel. Germany. we haven't really pushed the Europe sales very much at all.

[00:40:28] Chris Lee: It's just been what, kind of has command. We don't market out there or anything like that. Australia, we're starting in as well. We definitely are looking to branch out more into the Southern hemisphere, so.

[00:40:42] Dorothy Baunach: Good. go ahead, Ed. Thanks.

[00:40:44] Ed Rudberg: Sure. Thanks Dorothy. And we've been federally funded to date, so our focus has largely been in the United States as we've still been very much in pilot mode and pre-commercialization.

[00:40:54] Ed Rudberg: But we know, moving forward that with the wastewater issues that they're seeing in Europe with aging infrastructure, that that's gonna be a real priority for us, as we move forward. but so far, at least have been US focused.

[00:41:09] Dorothy Baunach: That's great, and then one other question, before I go to one from the Q and A. Chris.

[00:41:17] Dorothy Baunach: What are you seeing in terms of interventions for harmful algal blooms? So, detection is one side of the story, and we see this across all kinds of lakes, inland and whatever. If you're a golfer, you're gonna see, you know, the algae on the golf course and, you know, once, once it's there, particularly if you get to that, bacteria

[00:41:39] Dorothy Baunach: We're in trouble. The more the, you know, the more we see, the more trouble we're in. But what about the intervention for, uh,

[00:41:45] Chris Lee: yeah, yeah, that's a great question. And it's, it's, you know, the key, the key point really, you know, what are we doing about it when we have this issue? So I mean, I think most people are familiar with the old hammer that was used on most nails, which is the copper sulfates and those algae sites.

[00:42:03] Chris Lee: And by all means, more and more water utilities are actually using those when they didn't three years ago because the problems have really gotten worse. But the good news is, and I'm not really knocking– There's definitely a place for that kind of heavy hammer. but things tend to recur more quickly when you use that type of tool.

[00:42:26] Chris Lee: we're seeing people turn to encapsulated technologies in encapsulated hydrogen peroxides and other precursors to hydrogen peroxide. There's a variety of companies and, and I'm not, you know sort of, trying to sell you companies here, but Bluegreen Water Tech has a more environmentally friendly, and more long lasting solution that incorporates the monitoring.

[00:42:50] Chris Lee: We're looking at, we're working with several companies that are doing nanobubbles. Again, you can have a more environmentally friendly method of treating and in more of a constant flow using either pure oxygen, which is debatable on when and where it's useful. But you can also put other gases in such as micro doses of ozone that can be very effective and be, you know, quite healthy and it disappears very quickly.

[00:43:18] Chris Lee: So there's, there's a lot of research and a lot of good stuff coming out in the treatment general area. There's also, ultrasonic waves, and that they have their place too.   And other things are coming out too. So there's a lot of good stuff coming.

[00:43:38] Dorothy Baunach: That's great. Yeah, and you know, with the couple hundred innovators that we talk to a year, we're seeing a lot more intervention technologies on the algal blooms and you know, maybe we'll even do a spotlight on those one of these days because 

[00:43:53] Chris Lee: Yeah, you definitely should. I mean, there's a lot of interesting stuff there.

[00:43:55] Dorothy Baunach: There's, there's, and, and you've mentioned many of them. So, and, look, you know, looking for ways to not have to add so many chemicals to the water. 'cause it just complicates the issue more for the organic species that we need and want there. And then add, you know, how about you, what, what are you seeing on the intervention side on some of these other, bacteria that we don't want, or viruses that we don't want there?

[00:44:21] Ed Rudberg: Yeah, absolutely. And, and to Chris's point is we're seeing, I mean for us, because we go across many different verticals, and we're addressing many different items, you know, in, in wastewater, for example, aeration. and, and our goal is to optimize when that aeration occurs. Microbubbles. So there's a lot of really interesting companies that are coming out right now, with nano bubble technology.

[00:44:46] Ed Rudberg: If we're looking at aquaculture, what our goal is, is to really reduce the amount of antibiotics being used or otherwise. So you can do things like, harvest at the right time. If you can change feeding sites. The goal is really to reduce, you know, environmental impact, energy, cost, and optimize these systems through our quantitative measurements.

[00:45:12] Ed Rudberg: And we always say we don't make the Tylenol that takes your kids' fever down. We just tell that, “Hey, your kid has a fever”. And so we find ourselves partnering with, so you know, solution partners to bring together a solution suite for a customer because they have a problem, we need to come together and bring them that solution suite.

[00:45:35] Dorothy Baunach: That's a great approach. Chris, I'm gonna come back to you 'cause this is a question, from online. Can you discuss a little bit more of the challenges that you've faced in optimizing the strategy for the biofouling that you've experienced and,

[00:45:53] Chris Lee: yeah. Yeah. So, You know, every, well, most companies who do, sondes and monitoring buoys have, some sort of, brushing system.

[00:46:04] Chris Lee: And, by and large, and I'll just brag a little bit here, we've been told numerous times that people believe ours is the best. There's another company that does a very good job at it, YSI, but how you do the brushing really matters and also what your brushing matters. So we, we have an extremely, finely polished glass, very hard glass that's much easier to clean.

[00:46:30] Chris Lee: And our surfaces are kind of engineered to be very easy to clean. The brushing frequency, of course, plays a role. And we also have the ability to detect if there's, anything that might be catching on the system so we can trigger remotely and automatically or, on demand, a deep clean so we can do, you know, rather than have the standard brushing, we may do like 20 cycles in one direction and 20 cycles in the other direction.

[00:47:03] Chris Lee: Again, our system is overpowered battery and solar power wise. So we have the ability to do those extra, cleaning. So, yeah, we've had very good success with the biofouling standpoint and yeah, I'm very happy about that.

[00:47:20] Dorothy Baunach: That's exciting and, and you know, it's not the only device that we see that, has biofouling issues and there are many creative ways to do it, but I think you're right on the brushing and some of these biofouling, whatever these organisms are, are pretty nasty.

[00:47:38] Chris Lee: Yeah, I guess, sorry. Let me just say one more thing. I think maybe, the question may have also been addressing, what if you have, not just alga microalgae, but what if you have barnacles and larger things like, with shells, and that's something I didn't just address.

[00:48:00] Chris Lee: So yes, that is a separate issue where you would, you need to have, basically you need to have copper on the bottom. And so on our current instance, the algae tracker, we have the ability to fully, we have the algae tracker copper edition, which is a fully taped copper bottom. does a great job.

[00:48:22] Chris Lee: It does have to be the, the tape does have to be refreshed at the end of the year. The new, tracker XT version that we have is gonna be electroplatable, so we'll have an option where you can, where we will do this. It's not like the customer would do this, but we'll have an electroplated copper electroplated bottom.

[00:48:43] Chris Lee: and, other, other aspects of that system will also make it, even more, antifouling ready.

[00:48:51] Dorothy Baunach: Thank you. Thank you. So I'm gonna switch it up just a little bit here as we come to the end of time, but, not the end of time, literally just the end of our time together this morning. So, Ed, please, you know, you're both in a developmental stage and you've been working hard on this technology to perfect it, to get it right, to test it, to see where it's gonna go.

[00:49:14] Dorothy Baunach: What market challenges are you facing at this point? And tell us a little bit about that.

[00:49:20] Ed Rudberg: Sure. Absolutely. I mean, I think, we're all facing tariffs and, and uncertain marketplace. I mean, whenever you have an uncertain economy that has implications, whether it's on the venture capital side, on the procurement of parts side, any of that I think is challenging.

[00:49:38] Ed Rudberg: I think also the austerity we're seeing in the federal government when it comes to NOAA, and the trickle down to potentially with the ocean observing systems that we have, throughout, you know, the, the country, I think that, definitely makes an impact on environmental monitoring and so I think those are big things that we're all

[00:50:03] Ed Rudberg: dealing with, universally in this space. And, my hope is that, you know, at least for us, we can continue to look at B2B and different contexts and different verticals. And so that's part of the reason we're trying to learn a lot more about water and wastewater and even data centers and their issues with bio polling.

[00:50:22] Ed Rudberg: So I think we're all having to be a little bit more creative in the type of markets that we pursue.

[00:50:27] Dorothy Baunach: Yeah. And just real quickly, so what, what verticals do you feel you're gonna address first, and what's your competitive advantage in that very first one that you think you're gonna go after for your sales?

[00:50:39] Ed Rudberg: Yeah, absolutely. So I see us going at both aquaculture and wastewater, thinking about legionella disease, particularly in Europe and aquaculture simply because we've had a lot of traction there from pilots and otherwise, and that's where we were originally supported. And so we see aquaculture growing, not only internationally but in the Great Lakes as well.

[00:51:03] Ed Rudberg: And so our ability to track disease, any concerns that we would have with those production facilities and any of the disease or other organisms that might be problematic.

[00:51:16] Dorothy Baunach: That's awesome. Thank you. And Chris, the same question to you.

[00:51:21] Chris Lee: for, for market challenges. Well first, I'll, I'll echo what Ed said.

[00:51:25] Chris Lee: I think, when prospective, users of monitoring technologies are, are faced with, you know, a government that's removing spending for anything to do with environment and water. It's not the right environment to promote our industry, that's for sure and certainly tariffs.

[00:51:48] Chris Lee: I won't go into that. It's a little too much for this call, but, I think on a, on a, you know, negating that stuff, and you've potentially talked about this in previous calls, educating customers, on, you know, how can you change your process to help to use tracking.

[00:52:15] Chris Lee: Devices that are continuous in real time, how does that benefit? So what we've started doing is on a monthly basis, we are doing case studies and interviews with existing customers where they talk about, you know, what exactly they had a problem with, what they're using it for, how this helped.

[00:52:34] Chris Lee: If it helped, and we've been putting those into the website. So we've had case studies for every month for the last six months or so, with interviews, from drinking water utilities Lake Association, lake management companies, and others. So I think that's been really good to sort of, educate people on, okay, what would I do?

[00:52:55] Chris Lee: How would this benefit me really, to, to use this. So yeah, that's, I think, really having a better communication with how this can benefit.

[00:53:08] Dorothy Baunach: Thank you. And you know, just, to those on the webinar, you know, both of these companies have mentioned NOAA and how important that's been and how important it is to further the development.

[00:53:20] Dorothy Baunach: So, I hope you all remember NOAA as you speak with your elected officials about what's really important for not only the Great Lakes, but all freshwater water sources so that we can help to keep them clean and safe as we all depend on it. We're about ready to wrap up here. And, Ed, let me start with you.

[00:53:44] Dorothy Baunach: Anything further that you'd like to say to those in attendance this morning? And, and to wrap up a little bit on your thoughts  from NS2's perspective?

[00:53:56] Ed Rudberg: Sure. Thanks so much, Dorothy. I really appreciate the opportunity. Right now we're still very much in, in customer exploration, so those that are interested, love to pick your brains if you're in water, wastewater or otherwise in, in the water industry.

[00:54:09] Ed Rudberg: Just to learn more about the issues you're facing from a biology perspective. What type of biological monitoring you do now. just trying to learn, you know, continue to learn more about customer pain points and wanted to love to have those conversations. So please do reach out to me.

[00:54:27] Dorothy Baunach: Thank you and Chris, wrap up.

[00:54:29] Chris Lee: yeah. Thanks so much for having us. Thanks to the CWA, for hosting these and, Badger Meter for supporting as well. Yeah, we are happy to talk to anybody, get on a call, give live demos. We have a demo dashboard, if people want to, look at how that works.

[00:54:54] Chris Lee: and, happy to get on calls with anybody who has any questions.

[00:55:01] Dorothy Baunach: Thanks to both of you. I'm so happy that you were both available this morning to talk about your technologies, Ed and Chris. I'll add my thanks to Badger Meter for supporting the series, and also thanks to all of you for attending, on this morning after the holiday.

[00:55:21] Dorothy Baunach: And we really appreciate you all taking the time, to be with us for this innovator series and please, register when you can for our next one, which is on June 24th at 10:00 AM. It's going to talk a little bit about rapid detection and we can talk to you all then. have a great morning and great rest of your day. Thank you.

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