PEORIA, Ill. – The struggle for people in some parts of the world, coupled with people who somehow water their lawns while it’s raining, inspired a local student to create a better way.
Kushi Shah’s idea started out as a science project and now has made her into a business owner.
“My product is called ‘E-Code,’ and it’s a smart irrigation system,” said Shah, to 25 News. “It utilizes communication between underground humidity sensors and a propriety app to optimize water usage and minimize consumer costs by only irrigating when your land needs to be.”
Shah says she was inspired by a family trip to her native India, where families including hers could walk up to five miles to get “a basic human right,” in her words — clean water.
“When I came back to the states, this was something that was constantly on my mind,” said Shah. “There was a moment when I saw that someone had their sprinklers on in the rain. That was kind of my a-ha moment when I realized that irrigation is a sector in which we can reduce the water usage immensely to really allocate our water where it needs to be the most.”
It also helped, Shah says, that her father is a Caterpillar employee.
But, Shah says, her teachers are the ones who really inspired her, along with recognition from everywhere from the City of Peoria to NASA.
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