Project Guidance on Water Quality & Quantity Management

Projects General Guidance
1

AIM OF MY PROJECT: To build an autonomous real time device to measure the physical and chemical parameters of water using Arduino(an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple microcontroller board, and a development environment for writing software for the board.) Atmega 2560 Microcontroller. To study the Soft Sensor concept to minimize the numbers of sensors by checking the interdependencies of the physical & chemical parameters. I want to record temperature, dissolved oxygen, conductivity and pH at hourly intervals. I also want the system to be as compact as possible.

HARDWARE TOOLS FOR MY PROJECT:
Arduino Atmega 2560 development board
4x4 Matrix Keypad
16x2 LCD
Series 2 Zigbee Pair
Physical & Chemical Water Parameters Sensors(pH Sensor, Conductivity, Dissolved Oxygen, Temperature and level sensor)
Buzzer

QUERIES:

I have No Idea of from where to buy the Sensors and How to choose them as there are many in the market.

This is my Academic Project which I need to present by the end of June. As an Academic project my budget is normal. I just want it for demonstration purpose at my college.

CAN ANYONE PLEASE HELP ME IN DOING IT?

Picture1.jpg
Picture1.jpg773×440 49.4 KB

Picture2.jpg
Picture2.jpg1226×813 48.8 KB

Picture3.jpg
Picture3.jpg810×887 38.3 KB

2

Before people can help you need to supply some more information.
What are the 4 sensors your hoping to use (make, model & links to datasheets/website)
Are the LCD, buzzer, 4x4 keypad & zigbee's standard off the shelf parts?
What do you expect the LCD to display. The keypad to enter. When the buzzer works. What are you sending with zigbee.

3

Do you have an Arduino board ? Can you make a led blink ?
That is how to start with Arduino.

For the display and keypad are libraries and many examples.

Using the sensors requires knowledge about grounding and electrical noise and impedance and so on.

If you have sensors that are 5V compatible (or 3.3V) they can easily be used with the Arduino.
There are many libraries and code examples to interface digital sensors with Arduino, but not for all sensors.

The pH sensor is very sensitive. Some more expensive pH sensors are seperated from the Arduino ground. That prevents a lot of problems with grounding.

4

nehaberi:
CAN ANYONE PLEASE HELP ME IN DOING IT?

This is an academic assignment, isn't it?

5

Yes It is an Academic Assignment kind of a thing Sir, I have worked on the Arduino Atmega 2560 Board and done few basic interfacing that is with led,lcd,adc,keypad. I have attached the code which runs perfectly with lcd and keypad. Now could you please help me with choosing the sensors and zigbee coding. It will be a great help. I purchased a DHT11 Sensor and I am working on a Humidity cum Temperature Sensor (type: DHT11)

Please help me with the coding errors I'm getting after compilation(Image attached)

I have downloaded the library for DHT11 from the link: Arduino Playground - DHT11Lib
and installed it as shown in the link: http://arduino.cc/en/Guide/Libraries#.UyCIAV6prdU

& I saved the library in : -->Documents-->Arduino-->libraries-->idDHT11
Let me know if its in the right place.

My code:

#include "DHT.h"
#include <LiquidCrystal.h>
dht DHT;
#define DHTPIN 8   
#define DHTTYPE DHT11 
DHT dht(DHT_PIN, DHTTYPE);
LiquidCrystal lcd(12, 11, 5, 4, 3, 2);
void setup() {
Serial.begin(9600);
lcd.begin(16, 2);
dht.begin();
}
void loop() {
float h = dht.readHumidity();
float t = dht.readTemperature();
if (isnan(t) || isnan(h)) {
  Serial.println("Failed to read from DHT");
  }
else {
  lcd.clear();
  lcd.setCursor(0,0);
  lcd.print("Temp=");
  lcd.print(t);
  lcd.print(" *C");
  lcd.setCursor(0,1);
  lcd.print("Humidity=");
  lcd.print(h);
  lcd.print("% ");
  delay(500);
 }
}

Code ERRORS:
DHT11.ino:1:17: error: DHT.h: No such file or directory
DHT11:3: error: 'dht' does not name a type
DHT11:6: error: 'DHT' does not name a type
DHT11.ino: In function 'void setup()':
DHT11:11: error: 'dht' was not declared in this scope
DHT11.ino: In function 'void loop()':
DHT11:14: error: 'dht' was not declared in this scope

Thank you so much.

6

I have a few underwater dataloggers on the go at this point, and the pvc housings I have designed might help you along as they are fairly easy to produce with standard hardware store parts: http://edwardmallon.wordpress.com/
I am working on a new post for the pressure sensor, and will have that up in a few days.

The RIFFLE project at public lab: http://publiclab.org/wiki/riffle is also a great place to do some background reading.
As is the OPEN ROV project forum: http://openrov.com/ as they have a good sensor package in development.

WRT sensors. The easy way is to use the ATLAS sensors for DO, PH, etc. But the probes are fairly expensive, and you often have only a limited range for each one.

7

Take a look here. They are not cheap but they are the best probes on the market. Hope it helps.
https://www.atlas-scientific.com/sensors.html

Regards

8

Can any one suggest sensors other than atlas scientific?

9

To measure the pH is not easy, a cheap one might have a lot of noise and bad measurements.

Sparkfun has a kit (which is also atlas-scientific :stuck_out_tongue: ) : pH Sensor Kit - SEN-10972 - SparkFun Electronics

You can build a circuit yourself : Google Code Archive - Long-term storage for Google Code Project Hosting.
Or build something simple : arduino ph probe interface - Sparky's Widgets

Do you want to buy something for 20 dollars (probe + electronics) and have a pH value accurate to +0.5 or -0.5 ? I think that is not possible.
As far as I know, there is no hack for the cheap pocket meters.
These are only 9 dollars, but I don't know the technology that is used, and I can't find someone that hacked them for the Arduino.

10

There is a PH and EC driver board at sparky's widgets:

no probes there though.

And practical maker had a few boards: