Water is the basis of all life on the earth. The quality of drinking water plays a vital role in the well-being and health of human beings. The Drinking Water reaches via Distribution System from various water resources such as reservoirs, water tanks, and rivers to industrial, commercial, and residential areas through complex buried pipe networks. Thereby putting the water quality at risk of contamination. Contaminated water may cause serious health issues. Therefore it’s our duty to check the quality of the drinking water before use.
Our IoT-based water quality Monitoring system monitors the real-time water quality using a wireless sensor network. The monitoring system comprises sensor devices, microcontrollers, and communication devices is developed and system. The system uses a Zigbee module to send the water quality parameters such as pH, turbidity, and temperature to the user via the SMS alert and displayed on the LCD.
This proposed system helps to create more efficient and cost-effective municipal services and keeps citizens informed about the water quality. The Uncontaminated water bodies are crucial assets of cities. As the population is increasing day by day, it is inevitable that wastewater will grow and water sources will get polluted.
WHAT IS A WATER MONITORING SYSTEM?
Water Quality Monitoring (WQM) is designed as a cost-effective and efficient system designed to monitor drinking water quality which makes use of Internet of Things (IoT) technology. In this paper, the proposed system consists of several sensors to measure various parameters such as pH value, turbidity in the water, level of water in the tank, temperature, and humidity of the surrounding atmosphere. And also, the Microcontroller Unit (MCU) interfaced with these sensors, and further processing is performed at Personal Computer (PC). The obtained data is sent to the cloud by using IoT based ThinkSpeak application to monitor the quality of the water.
Measurement parameters of WQM system
Basically, there are many parameters that are needed to be measured for water quality analysis. However, the WQM system proposed measures the key water parameters:
- Water’s pH value.
- Turbidity of the water.
- Water level present in the tank.
- Temperature and humidity of the surrounding atmosphere.
WORKING PRINCIPLE:
The proposed system comprises four sensors which are pH, turbidity, ultrasonic, DHT-11, and also the microcontroller unit as the main processing module and one data transmission module ESP8266 Wi-Fi module (NodeMCU). The microcontroller unit function as the main part of the system developed for water quality measurement. Among four sensors, two of the sensors collect the data in the form of analog signals. The On-chip ADC on the microcontroller converts the analog signal of the sensor into the digital format. For this analog output from the sensor, connected directly to the MCU’s analog pins. Whereas the other two sensors output directly connected to the digital pins of the MCU units. All the sensor data is processed by the MCU and updated to the ThingSpeak server using the Wi-Fi data communication module ESP8266 (NodeMCU) to the central server. The sensor that detects the pH value will pass through the information to the Arduino. The pH sensor measures the pH of the water on a 14 point scale with 0 indicating the most acidic, 7 neutral, and 14 referred to as the most basic. Turbidity sensors are used to measure water turbidity and to estimate water quality.
The block diagram of the system proposed for water quality measurement
Arduino Mega 2560
The Arduino Mega 2560 is a microcontroller board based on the ATmega2560. It has 54 digital input/output pins (of which 15 can be used as PWM outputs), 16 analog inputs, 4 UARTs (hardware serial ports), a 16 MHz crystal oscillator, a USB connection, a power jack, an ICSP header, and a reset button. It contains everything needed to support the microcontroller; simply connect it to a computer with a USB cable or power it with an AC-to-DC adapter or battery to get started.
ESP8266-WiFi Module:
ESP8266 Wifi Module AP & Station Remote Serial Wireless IoT Board designed based on an integrated chip specifically to fulfill the needs of a new connected world. It can handle all the necessary overhead for communicating with your network, such as TCP/IP stack and communicating with your 802.11 networks.
PH SENSOR:
the pH of water is one of the most important factors that should be considered while using drinking water. The Ph factor indicates whether the water consists of contaminants and determines t5he quality of water. If the pH of your water is not having the optimal range results in presence of other contaminants in the water. The pH sensor measures the pH of the water on a 14 point scale with 0 indicating the most acidic, 7 neutral, and 14 referred to as the most basic.
TURBIDITY SENSOR:
Turbidity sensors are used to measure water turbidity and to estimate water quality. These sensors are used to measure the particles in wash water/dirt water. Turbidity is the process in which the particles of solid matter are suspended in water, rather than dissolved into it. Turbidity testing is an important process in water quality maintenance. The increased level of turbidity raises water temperature because suspended particles absorb heat. The warm water consists of less dissolved oxygen than cold. So when water temperature increases result in a decreased level of dissolved oxygen
Ultrasonic Module HC-SR-04
This ultrasonic sensor module is used for measuring distance, object sensors, motion sensors, etc. Ultrasonic Sensor HC-SR04 uses sonar to measure the distance of the object. It emits an ultrasonic wave at 40 kHz which will go and bounce back after hitting an object. An ultrasonic sensor detects and measures the distance of a target object using ultrasonic sound waves and converts the reflected sound into an electrical signal.
DHT11 Sensor
The DHT 11 is a low-powered electronic device that lets us get the value of the temperature and the moisture and it uses 1 wire protocol. The sensor consists of a capacitive humidity sensor and a Thermistor connected to a high-performance 8-bit microcontroller. It measures the surrounding air and outputs a digital signal on the data pin (no analog input pins needed).DHT11 strictly factory calibrated that is extremely accurate on humidity calibration, hence easy to interface with other microcontrollers. Using dedicated digital module acquisition technology and temperature, humidity sensors ensure the products with high reliability and excellent long-term stability.
CONCLUSION:
As water is one of the basic needs of human life existence, it is necessary to monitor water quality time on time. Around 40% of deaths are caused due to contaminated water in the world. Hence, it is necessary to ensure supply of purified drinking water for the people both in cities and villages. This proposed Water Quality Monitoring (WQM) is designed as a cost-effective and efficient system designed to monitor drinking water quality which makes use of Internet of Things (IoT) technology. This Water Quality Monitoring system performs real-time monitoring of water quality using Arduino, pH sensor, Ultrasonics sensors, DHT11 sensor, Turbidity Sensor and can be monitored through the smartphone via ESP8266 Wifi Module.