Hydrosense: a Low-Cost, Open-Source, Hydroclimatic Monitoring System

In the world of water resource management, professional monitoring systems are often large, expensive, and disconnected. Major obstacles are the reliance on legacy industrial data loggers and the lack of an affordable data collection network. This project aims to overcome these obstacles that inhibit the proliferation of watershed monitoring systems. The HydroSense system is comprised of four open-source pieces of hardware: 1) HydroSense Wireless Link, 2) HydroSense Datalogger, 3) HyrdoSense OpenSonde, and 4) HydroSense Weather Module. The hardware couples with open-source software libraries for Arduino microcontroller and Raspberry Pi computer to simplify use of the hardware. This allows users to easily customize or extend the sensing application to meet their unique needs, using modern open-source tools. The goal is to enable the creation of a grassroots wide-area wireless network for collecting and reporting low sample rate hydroclimatic data. Each long range 915 MHz HydroSense Wireless Link is managed by a gateway node running on a Raspberry Pi located near a high-speed internet access point (DSL, cable modem, or cellular). Sensor nodes can be placed anywhere within the coverage cell. The Wireless Link is on an Arduino shield and is designed specifically to connect to the HydroSense Datalogger. HydroSense Datalogger is an Arduino Leonardo with an SD card, solar battery charger, SDI-12 network interface, and general purpose IO ports for connecting various instruments. It is fully compatible with the Arduino Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and complies with the Arduino standard shield interface. HydroSense OpenSonde is a low-cost water quality monitoring sonde. The OpenSonde integrates an Arduino Leonardo and specialized hardware for sensing: pH, DO, EC, ORP, pressure, and temperature. The sensor probes are installed in a novel low cost housing with a waterproof compartment for the OpenSonde. HydroSense Weather Module touts compatibility with most Davis Standard sensors or custom sensors using exposed header pins. Supported sensing parameters are: humidity, rainfall, wind, pressure, solar radiation, and temperature. These parameters are communicated over industry standard SDI-12 to the HydroSense Datalogger