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discussion / Build Your Own Data Logger Community  / 15 April 2021

Wildlogger for freshwater monitoring

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Hi Akiba, Jacinta, and wildlogger group.

We're proposing to trial Wildloggers for monitoring freshwater [streams], starting with water temperature and dissolved oxygen sensors. Water conductivity and turbidity sensors may be added later.

Is anyone in the Wildlogger group doing anything similar??

Links to the sensors:

https://www.adafruit.com/product/381

https://atlas-scientific.com/kits/gravity-analog-do-kit/ 

 

Best Regards,

Nigel



Akiba
@Freaklabs
Freaklabs
I'm an engineer and product designer working on wildlife conservation technology.
Group Curator
WILDLABS Event Speaker
WILDLABS Author

15 April 2021 10:34am

Hi Nigel.

At the moment, I don't know of any other groups doing water monitoring. @JAL is doing a cave monitoring project. The DS18B20 is a nice sensor. It was the original sensor I was going to use for the Wildlogger kit before switching to the DHT11. One thing is that you may need to test how waterproof it actually is. When I took them apart, there was just a heat shrink tubing seal to the DS18B20 with exposed pins inside the stainless steel tube.  
I haven't had the chance to play with a DO sensor yet, but definitely hoping for more info once you deploy. It sounds like a fascinating project.

Akiba

Harold Tay
@htarold
Worked as a mechanical engineer for a defence co, then software engineer, then for a research lab specialising in underwater robotics.
WILDLABS Research Participant
Commenter level 3
Conversation starter level 1

17 April 2021 2:46am

Hi Nigel,

Are you interested in attended or unattended monitoring?  You can take inspiration from openctd, also the cave pearl project which has a few variants.  IMO the atlas instruments are probably the safest way to go.  Water quality sensors are frightfully expensive, and even Atlas sensors are spendy in my book.

I heard there was a chap calibrating DS18B20 units (NIST traceable) for USD20 or so, that would partially remove the accuracy issue (the 18B20 is accurate to 0.5degC only).  The 18B20 can come already waterproofed which is convenient.