Low-Cost Portable Prototypes for Water Quality Monitoring

This paper presents the design of a low-cost electronic multiparametric probe for in situ water monitoring. We called this prototype Citizen Aqua Probe, which integrates different electronic components and commercial sensor modules to determine parameters of temperature, Potential of Hydrogen (pH), Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), and Electrical Conductivity (EC). We calibrated the sensors using liquids with very well-known parameters of pH and CE depending on the temperature, and the results were compared with those obtained with commercial probes to evaluate the reliability of our prototype, showing a good agreement with the analyzed data in reference samples. The system's designed architecture and the software implementation will be presented in this paper, showing the advantages of the implemented prototype. The location of electronic components in a unique and small box obtained with a 3D printer makes this prototype very compact, portable, and adequate to support the ambient conditions. Considering that we implemented the prototype with low-cost electronic sensors and components, this prototype is very competitive for use in remote areas due to its good cost-benefits, and the implemented software allows a customized application for data analysis and visualization.