Here’s the thing about rural Australia: the internet comes and goes. Water doesn’t.

Anyone who’s lived outside a major city knows the drill. The router needs a reboot. The NBN, even if you have it, can have little “moments”. The mobile signal wanders off to think about its life choices. None of that changes the fact that the water in the tank still matters.

So AquaVigil was designed on the assumption that the internet is nice to have, not something you can rely on.

This system doesn’t run in a “normal mode” and a sad little fallback mode. It was built to work properly in two ways simultaneously— and both of them are intentional.

Some people want to check their tank level from the other side of the world.
Some people just want to walk past the kitchen bench and see that everything’s fine.
AquaVigil does both, without forcing you into either camp.

Let’s be very clear about this part: AquaVigil does not require internet to function. Internet access is optional, not foundational. The tank gets measured, the data gets sent, and the level gets displayed whether you’re online, offline, or somewhere in between.

AquaVigil was uses a low-power e-ink display, just like in your new fandangle Kindle. It just sits there, quietly showing your tank level, using almost no power and asking for nothing in return. If the internet drops out, nothing changes. If the router locks up, nothing changes. Even brief power blips don’t cause drama, because the whole system is designed to sip power, not chug it.  Even if the power cuts off completly, as soon as its comes back, service resumes, no biggie.

E-ink helps a lot here. Once the image is on the screen, it stays there. No backlight. No constant refreshing. No “why is this screen blank again?” moments. It’s always visible and always readable.

And because AquaVigil broadcasts its data rather than pairing with a single screen, you can have more than one display if you want. Kitchen, shed, the outside dunny — they all see the same information. Adding another display doesn’t stress the system; it just listens in.

If you do have reliable internet and want remote access, that’s fine too. AquaVigil can be viewed away from home with a bit of setup, and there’s more coming in that space. But the important thing is this: the system doesn’t fall over without the internet.

My family dont want to worry about the internet, so, the brief was pretty clear, the water monitor shouldn’t panic when the Wi-Fi sneezes.