Low-Cost Turbidity Sensor for Low-Power Wireless Monitoring of Fresh-Water Courses

Abstract

This paper reports on a low-cost turbidity sensor design for continuous on-line water quality monitoring applications. The measurement of turbidity by agricultural and environmental scientists is restricted by the current cost and functionality of available commercial instruments. Although there are a number of low-cost turbidity sensors exploited within domestic 'white-goods', such as dishwashers, the lack of sensitivity and power-usage of these devices make them unsuitable for freshwater quality monitoring purposes. The recent introduction of wireless protocols and hardware, associated with the 'Internet-of-Things' concept for machine-tomachine autonomous sensing and control, has enabled the largescale networked intelligent water turbidity monitoring system that implements relatively low-cost sensors to be developed. The proposed sensor uses both transmitted light and orthogonal (90 degrees) scattered light detection principles, and is 2-3 orders of magnitude lower in cost as compared to the existing commercial turbidity sensors. With an 850nm infrared LED, and dual orthogonal photodetectors, the proposed design is capable of measuring turbidity within the range of 0-1000 Nephelometric Turbidity Unit (NTU) with improved accuracy and robustness as compared to the existing low cost turbidity sensors. The combination of orthogonal and transmitted light detection unit provide both 0-200 NTU high resolution and accuracy sensing and 0-1000 NTU lower resolution and accuracy sensing capability. Results from calibration experiment are presented, which proved that the proposed sensor design produced a comparable turbidity reading as a commercial turbidity sensor.

Development of a Cost-Effective Optical Sensor for Continuous Monitoring of Turbidity and Suspended Particulate Matter in Marine Environment

“…For marine or fluvial environments, where turbidity can have higher values, many of these methods and related devices become impracticable, not only because of their low dynamic range, but also because most of them are laboratory devices, making them large, expensive and dependent of the electrical grid. Some turbidity sensors for continuous monitoring were developed for continuous monitoring in the last years [16,17,18,19]. Most of them are optical devices that only use one type of detection, becoming specific for a strict type of environment and without the flexibility to adapt to other contexts.…”

(EERSM): Energy-Efficient Multi-Hop Routing Technique in Wireless Sensor Networks Based on Combination between Stationary and Mobile Nodes

“…For WSNs in agricultural missions, authors in [9] proposed a low cost turbidity sensor design for the purpose of monitoring water quality online. The idea is based designing sensor nodes which utilize orthogonal scattered light and transmitted light detection principle.…”

Automatic Drain System in Seawater Aquarium with Fuzzy Logic Method

“…In maintaining sea water ornamental fish there are things that need to be considered, for example is the quality of water that will be a fish habitat. Water quality plays a very important role in the development and growth of sea water ornamental fish that are vulnerable to dirty environmental conditions [3]. Based on research conducted by K.Raghu Sita Rama Raju and his colleagues [4].…”

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