Open-source Internet of Things remote aquatic environmental sensing

This paper details the physical and hardware design of a flexible open-source IoT (Internet of Things) platform for environmental sensing. The application is a remote water quality monitoring buoy that can be deployed in calm, shallow near-shore aquatic environments with fresh or brackish water. The system’s development has been informed by experience through conducting multiple actual water quality studies over a prolonged period. The system runs an Arduino Mega 2560 microcontroller using off-the-shelf Adafruit lux and temperature sensors. A light attenuation turbidity sensor is adapted and integrated into the design. A TinySine 3G GSM module transmits data to a server that is displayed via a ThingsBoard IoT dashboard. The system is stable over time, provides reliable remote sensor readings, has low energy consumption, and is powered by renewable energy (up-cycled batteries). The hardware aspires to be general-purpose so that future environmental monitoring applications can repurpose the electronics by adding new compatible sensors and modifying the physical design to match the requirements.