Planet Arduino

Clean water is one of our most precious resources, but identifying sources of pollution often means expensive equipment. This can also mean taking multiple water quality readings and somehow aggregating them together to be easily usable. As a solution to both problems, Andrei Florian has developed WaterAid — which was recently named a finalist in this year’s Hackaday Prize.

WaterAid consists of a measurement unit that senses water pH, turbidity, and temperature, as well as atmospheric temperature and humidity. Data is relayed to the system’s backend via a cellular connection, using an onboard MKR GSM 1400. Collected information from one or more devices is then displayed on a Soracom Lagoon dashboard for water monitoring from anywhere in the world!

Not only can a fleet of WaterAids be used to continuously track a river, lake, or any other body of water, but individuals looking to get immediate feedback on quality can utilize the portable tool’s NeoPixel ring for color-coded judgement.

More details on the low-cost and scalable project can be found in Florian’s log here.

Water is essential to life on earth, and making sure our rivers and lakes are free from pollution is therefore quite important. For environmental monitoring, students from Bergen County Academics Magnet High School have come up with the Intelli-Buoy system that can track water turbidity, pH, oxygen, and temperature levels for analysis. It can also keep tabs on wind speed and rain stats for possible correlation.

The floating device uses a pair of Arduino Unos with an SD card shield mounted on each in order to record these statistics over several days, and it’s designed with two external USB ports for easy access.

Be sure to check out this orange PVC sensor assembly the video seen here.