Water quality measurement buoy
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What are we talking about??
Water quality is an essential factor for the health and well-being of people and ecosystems. However, many coastal and lake areas suffer from pollution from various sources, such as industrial, agricultural, urban or tourist activities. This situation negatively affects biodiversity, food security, economic development and the quality of life of local communities. To address this problem, continuous and efficient monitoring of water quality is required, which makes it possible to detect and prevent environmental and health risks, as well as measures to design and implement appropriate management and restoration. However, conventional monitoring methods, based on specific sampling and laboratory analysis, are expensive, slow and limited in their spatial and temporal coverage. In this context, smart buoys emerge as a technological innovation that offers a more effective and sustainable solution for monitoring water quality. These buoys are equipped with a variety of advanced sensors that can measure a wide range of environmental parameters, such as temperature, salinity, pH, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, chlorophyll, nutrients, heavy metals, hydrocarbons, bacteria, viruses, etc. In addition, smart buoys can transmit the collected data in real time via wireless or satellite networks, making it easier to access and process by scientists and environmental authorities. The objective of this project is to build a low-cost smart buoy to measure the water quality of bays and lakes, using accessible and easy-to-assemble materials and components. This buoy will allow obtaining relevant and updated information on the state and evolution of aquatic ecosystems, as well as identifying and alerting about possible pollution episodes. The project is part of a Cuban-Belgian collaboration, financed by the Academy of Research and Higher Education (ARES), which seeks to promote the exchange of knowledge and experiences between both countries in the field of environmental monitoring.
Antecedent
The SmartWater project is a participatory and citizen initiative that seeks to improve the monitoring of water quality in ponds and waterways in the Brussels region, through the use of innovative, low-cost, sustainable and accessible tools for all. The project is led by a consortium of associations, universities and an administration, which collaborate with each other to develop and experiment with different technological solutions, such as autonomous aquatic robots, an interactive application for observing aquatic environments, pedagogical workshops in the field and research projects. scientific investigation. The SmartWater project is a direct antecedent of BBCuba, an inspiration and reference that I will know how to take advantage of in my project, building a low-cost smart buoy to measure the quality of the water in bays and lakes, using accessible and easy-to-assemble materials and components. . Like SmartWater, this project has a participatory and citizen dimension, as it seeks to involve local communities in the monitoring and conservation of aquatic ecosystems. The SmartWater project therefore offers an example of good practices and lessons learned that I can apply and adapt to my own context.
What is the dream?
The idea is to make an intelligent buoy with long autonomy and maximum independence, capable of measuring a series of parameters (yet to be defined) necessary for the study of reservoirs, being able to transmit them in "real time" and view them remotely.
Sistem
This diagram is a sample of what the integration of the different parts of the system would be like, with one or several buoys collecting parameters, sending the collected data to a gateway, so that it can send it to the cloud, where it will be stored. in a database to be accessed at the user's request through a web interface.In this link I leave all the files generated for that project
Why a gateway?
Well, many may wonder why we should not directly send the data from the buoys to the cloud and this way we eliminate the gateway and simplify the system. This is due to two factors, the first would be the energy consumption, the buoys must have the lowest possible consumption, because they will have an energy limited to the size of the battery (and in future versions they will generally be achieved with solar energy), without However, the gateway will be powered directly from the electrical grid, so it is more efficient to only use Lora communication (which is very low consumption) on the buoys and leave the rest to the gateway. Another important aspect is that these buoys are planned to be installed first in Cuba, where internet connectivity is unstable, so it is reasonable to be redundant in the connection.
Why Lora?
LoRaWAN is a proprietary LPWAN connectivity protocol developed by Semtech. It is known for its low power consumption and high transmission range (even compared to other LPWANs). In addition, it has a high resistance to interference, since its wireless modulation is based on technology developed for the military and space industry. Therefore, it is ideal for the project under development.
Limitations
LoRaWAN achieves lower power and long range in part by sacrificing bandwidth. The use of unlicensed frequency bands (868 MHz in Europe) only allows uplink and downlink messages to be sent at predefined intervals and therefore does not allow a continuous flow of data. LoRaWAN is therefore only ideal for periodic communications and (if you want to save battery life) should be used primarily for uplink communications.As is well understood in this image taken from spacewell
LoRaWAN provides long-range communications of up to five kilometers in urban areas and 15 kilometers in rural areas, which can be tested before a larger scale launch. An indispensable feature of the LoRaWan solution is its ultra-low power requirements, enabling the creation of battery-powered devices that can last up to ten years.
Design and manufacturing of the buoy
As inspiration I took other designs of similar products on the web, and some classic bathroom elements that from experience we all know float.
Although my imagination told me to do something big and showy that could be seen in the distance and that would serve as a lighthouse for sailors, my reality imposed something else on me...hehe. Well, the size of the design is given by the maximum dimensions of the Prusa printer bed.
Until now all the fabrications have been made with PLA but according to what they say on the internet, this material does not resist outdoors, so the final version of this project will be manufactured in Polypropylene, which is a filament apparently designed for this type of applications .
Closing joints
The design is intentionally made with the fewest possible parts, even so to seal both parts I used a gasket that I cast myself using the knowledge of the Molding and Casting week.
La solucion de hacer la junta en el mismo cuerpo de la boya no fue efectiva, queda demasiado pequeñ y no comprime. Asi que decidi fundir una junta en aparte y asi poder varias segun mis necesidades la altura o la forma
luego de varias pruebas con distintos materiales, determine que la indicada por su dureza y flexivilidad es la OOMO0 25
Electronic Part
The electronic part will be nothing more than a slight redesign of the week of Electronic Designed, which is the one with which we have been carrying out almost all tests throughout the course, both the sensors and the communication are already ready, so It won't be very complicated to adapt it to the final prototype.
Connection diagram
This diagram shows the integration of the electronic part in the project, the connections of sensors and batteries are noted, as well as the data flow until reaching the final interface.
Design in kicad
Manufacturing
Un video rapido sobre el proceso de fabricacion y produccion.
Finalmente con un poco de silicona lo fije a a la boya y este viene siendo el resultado final
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Battery
Taking into account that the energy demand of the system is about 100mA per day (calculated, STILL TO BE VERIFIED), I decided to put 3 18650 batteries in parallel, which should be enough for about 2 months of continuous use without charge
In the near future I will include an extraction system to perform spectral processing of water in a quartz basin, it was not included in this version due to time issues, but it is the next Milestone Like the electronics, the software is a slight redesign of the one used in the Interface Application Programming week I will create a web application in Firebase to display the sensor readings saved in the Firebase Realtime Database. The sensor readings web page is protected with email and password authentication. The following diagram shows the broad outline of the project that I am going to build. Everything related to the reading of the Temperature and Pressure sensors is described in the week of input device, the necessary elements for the connection of both nodes through Lora are in the week of Networking Communications, as well as the necessary configurations for the connection with the cloud they are in a week of Interface Application Programming. These are the final codes for both the buoy and the gateway: To maintain control over the use of my work, I have selected the “Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial - CC-BY-NC” license. This license permits others to use, share, and adapt my work for non-commercial purposes while requiring attribution to me. The license was chosen using the Creative Commons Chooser. improvements in the immediate future
Software
Realtime Database Firebase
Firmware
Result
Explanatory video
Project dessimination
