← All projects

floodguard/

Our capstone: a flood early-warning system for the Ilang-Ilang River in Noveleta, Cavite. A sensor watches the water level, and when it rises past a threshold the warning goes out by SMS, because a text message reaches people who are not watching a dashboard. I lead the team.

role: Team leader
hardware: NodeMCU (ESP8266) · SIM800L GSM module · 16x2 LCD
for: MDRRMO and Municipality of Noveleta, Cavite
status: Prototype, bench-tested, presented to the client 7 October 2026. Capstone due 2027

The FloodGuard prototype on a tiled floor: a NodeMCU board and a breadboard wired to a water-level sensor, a GSM module with its antenna, and a green LCD reading FloodGuard v3.1, Water: 135 cm. — Version 3.1 on the bench. The LCD shows the reading the text message below was sent with.

The problem

A warning nobody sees is not a warning

Noveleta floods. A monitoring dashboard is useful to the office that watches it, but the people who most need to know the water is rising are the ones asleep, out, or without data. So the output of this system is not a chart. It is a text message, sent over the ordinary cellular network, to a phone that does not need an app or an internet connection to receive it.

What works today

Sensor to LCD to a real phone

A NodeMCU board reads the water level and shows it on a 16x2 LCD.
A SIM800L GSM module sends the alert as an SMS over the Smart cellular network. On 13 July 2026 the bench test delivered to a real phone, then sent again five minutes later to show the pipeline holds up on repeat.
A web dashboard shows the live reading against a critical threshold, turns red when the level crosses it with an instruction to evacuate, and plots the recent trend. It sits behind a login, with a barangay administrator role.

A phone lock screen on Monday 13 July at 4:28 showing a text message: FloodGuard v3.1 bench test, SMS pipeline verified, water level 135 cm, sent via SIM800L over Smart cellular network, alert system operational. — The first alert, received on an ordinary phone.

The FloodGuard monitoring dashboard on a phone, signed in as a barangay admin with the sensor online. Current status RED: 18.2 cm, 114 percent of critical, with the message evacuate now and follow barangay evacuation routes, — The dashboard in its red state. Thresholds set for a bench test, not a river.

Taken to the client

Presented to the people who would use it

Before building, we visited Noveleta's disaster risk reduction office to hear how flood watch is done now. On 7 October 2026 we took the prototype back to them: a presentation at Noveleta's town hall to the Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (MDRRMO) and Mayor Davey R. Chua, covering the problem as the office described it, what already works, and what is still to come.

Two LPU students standing with two staff of the Noveleta local disaster risk reduction and management office in their office, a portrait of the municipal mayor on the wall behind them. The ID cards are blurred. — At the Noveleta local disaster risk reduction and management office (LDRRMO), the office a warning system for the town has to work with. ID cards blurred.

Five LPU students standing in front of a screen with the FloodGuard title slide: Flood warning for the Ilang-Ilang River, for Hon. Davey R. Chua, Municipal Mayor, and the MDRRMO Noveleta, 7 October 2026. The student in the middle is speaking. ID cards blurred. — The team at the title slide, 7 October 2026. ID cards blurred.

A student presenting beside a screen that reads: The problem. Someone must watch the river, all night. Rain plus high tide. Watched by hand. Slow to warn. ID card blurred. — The problem: someone must watch the river all night, by hand.

A view along a long conference table of municipal staff listening, some in police and coast guard uniforms, with the problem slide on the screen at the far end of the room. — Municipal staff and uniformed officers following along.

A wide view of the meeting room: officials seated at tables arranged in a U, framed portraits on the wall, and a presenter standing at the right, mid-answer. ID cards blurred. — Questions from the room afterwards.

Honest notes

Where it actually stands

This is a prototype on a bench, not a deployed system. The readings in these pictures are test values, the dashboard is running on a local network rather than the internet, and nothing is installed at the Ilang-Ilang River yet. The prediction half of the capstone is part of the plan and is not shown here, so this page makes no claim about it. What has been shown is the part that has to work before anything else matters: a reading becomes a text message on a real phone, over a real network.