BuyUrDIY:
Low Cost Aquatic DIY Sensors
The Basic Idea:
This site serves as a guide to help you build a self-contained DIY sensor. Think of this as a collection of ideas that you can use to make and modify systems to suit your needs. Everything pictured here is very DIY - hopefully showing you that you don't need anything too specialized to do this work.
There is a wealth of simple and cheap consumer grade environmental sensors available. By pairing these sensors, and some creativity, with open source Micro Controllers (Arduinos), you can build fully custom and inexpensive, data logger sensors. Using these systems, individuals can deploy these sensors in a variety of aquatic environments to learn about what is happening above and below the water.
By navigating through the tabs at the top, you can explore a variety of other useful information about power saving techniques, waterproofing sensors, building cases to house these electronics, and some examples of different applications of these sensor systems.
Everything used is based off of open source code and hardware, and all the electronics are readily available in a variety of online markets. Nothing being done here is particularly new, but rather merges a variety of code, and knowledge, to try and make something useful (code found on GitHub). Since everything is open source, feel free to modify and improve on anything you feel you can. There are likely more efficient and better ways to do everything here, but ultimately if it works, it works.
This site purposely is showing 3 different versions (Uno, Nano, Pro Mini), each of which is a 5 v Arduino, using the same basic processor chip (ATmega328P). This is just one system that can work - there are hundreds of other microprocessor chips that could also achieve these goals. These 3 just happen to be cheap, readily available, and have lots of user support. All the code used is also interchangeable if you have the same peripheries (i.e. RTC chip). The Uno will be the largest, but simplest. The Nano is a major size improvement on the Uno. And the Pro Mini is the smallest and most power efficient, but most technical to make.
This site is intended for anyone who doesn't have much background in electronics or fabrication. The language used is purposely loose, and not concerned with being overly technical, in hopes that it can convey the ideas across without getting lost. Hopefully there is enough here that if you just want to build something quickly, you can do that. Or if you want to go further into the weeds, this can be a starting point for you.
NOTE for researchers:
Feel free to use any of the information or code provided here for your projects / research. You should modify and improve on these designs / code to better suit your needs and to work more efficiently. If you wish to cite this work, use the DOI provided below that links back to the GitHub.
