Development of an IoT-Based Low-Cost Multi-Sensor Buoy for Real-Time Monitoring of Dhaka Canal Water Condition

One of the most serious concerns for green globalization is water pollution. Being a riverine country, Bangladesh is focused to improve its water quality with its increasing population. Water quality monitoring in daily basis has always been a costly initiative in terms of time, human resources for large number of water bodies scattered throughout the country; the task become more daunting for ensuring sustainability after cleaning or improving water quality once. The consistency of drinking water must be monitored in real time in order to ensure its safety. Quality of water also needs to be addressed for irrigation and fish farming. In this paper, a multi-sensor buoy especially for canal water of Dhaka city has been designed for condition monitoring and predictive maintenance purpose and developed accordingly to facilitate the measurement of water quality in a regular interval; monitoring the water quality changes trends; reporting the data to the authority; and finally relating the trends to develop a model for the future. The design and implementation for this real-time water quality monitoring using the Internet of Things (IoT) is of a low-cost framework. The prototype has been deployed and validated with its operations towards the purpose. The system which consists of multiple sensors, is used to measure the water's physical and chemical parameters including the Temperature, pH, turbidity, and the TDS (total dissolved solids) of the water. The core controller will process and calculate values received from the sensors. Arduino is used as a central controller. Finally, the sensors data are sent to respective parties via short messages (SMS) and also viewed on internet using WI-FI system. The developed mechanism can also be implicated for similar water quality monitoring network including lakes and rivers.