Low Cost Monitoring Systems for Environmental and Water Resources Applications

摘要

This work describes utilizing low cost solutions for environmental and water resources monitoring. These solutions were made possible by the vast and recent development of printed circuit boards (PCBs) with microcontrollers, and the accompanying integrated development environment (IDE) programming platforms. Systems were developed for three applications: the first was a water evaporation monitoring system that was intended to measure the amount of reduction in evaporation when using floating solar panels to cover a water body. The second application was a power outcome monitoring system of the solar panels, those floating and comparable ground-mounted ones, while the third system was developed for stream stage monitoring and was intended to continuously monitor flood water. The three systems were successfully developed and implemented and essential data was recorded and analyzed. The cost of each of the systems was 5%-10% of the cost of comparable commercial systems. The efforts were successful only by collaboration of people in different disciplines: civil and environmental engineers, microelectronic specialists, and communication engineers.