Design and Implementation of AquoSense – a Water Quality Sensor System

Aquaculture has become an effective breeding and farming method for aquatic plants and animals, but is also rendered vulnerable by increasing weather fluctuations and unexpected environmental changes that affect water quality. Real-time detection of fluctuations in water quality parameters is important for executing appropriate and timely operational responses to minimize losses, say, due to fish kills or a collapse of a harvest cycle. This necessitates continuous monitoring which, at present, is mostly done manually, aperiodically, inconsistently, haphazardly, and oftentimes reactively. To address these pain points, the proponents have designed and developed AquoSense - a low-cost and easy-to-use water quality sensor system. AquoSense can be automated or pre-programmed to regularly measure parameters such as pH, dissolved oxygen (DO), electrical conductivity (EC), and temperature; and monitor the derived parameters salinity, total dissolved solids (TDS), and specific gravity (SG). Tests done for pH and EC sensor probes revealed that it can be comparable to a commercial-grade water quality measuring device. AquoSense can store data locally, and/or transmit these to a local mobile device or to the internet cloud. AquoSense comes in two versions: handheld and submersible, and both have been tested in the laboratory and deployed in aqua field conditions.