Evaluating IoT based passive water catchment monitoring system data acquisition and analysis

Abstract

Water quality is the main aspect to determine the quality of aquatic systems. Poor water quality will pose a health risk for people and ecosystems. The old methods such as collecting samples of water manually and testing and analysing at lab will cause the time consuming, wastage of man power and not economical. A system is needed to provide a real-time data for environmental protection and tracking pollution sources. This paper aims to describe on how to monitor water quality continuously through IoT platform. Water Quality Catchment Monitoring System was introduced to check and monitor water quality continuously. It’s features five sensors which are temperature sensor, light intensity sensor, pH sensor, GPS tracker and Inertia Movement Unit (IMU). IMU is a new feature in the system where the direction of x and y is determined for planning and find out where a water quality problem exists by determining the flow of water. The system uses an internet wireless connection using the ESP8266 Wi-Fi Shield Module as a connection between Arduino Mega2560 and laptop. ThingSpeak application acts as an IoT platform used for real-time data monitoring.