Low-Cost System for Monitoring Water Quality Parameters in Lentic and Lotic Ecosystems

Abstract

Water consumption is vital for human survival and plays a crucial role in the healthy functioning of the human body. However, the use of drinking water for human consumption has raised growing concerns due to water scarcity and droughts. Therefore, it is necessary to implement projects aimed at the effective use of water, including waste reduction and the reuse of alternative sources. This paper aims to describe the development of a low-cost water quality parameter monitoring system named APPT (Drinking Water for All), with a focus on the chlorine dosing system. Monitoring will be conducted in two reservoirs, one for storing rainwater and river water and the other for treating the stored water. The system provides automatic control of residual chlorine dosage and visualization of pH, water level, and temperature parameters through a website, using technologies such as Apache, Lolin D1 Mini Pro, MySQL, PHP, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Node.js, and Twilio. Additionally, APPT includes a real-time notification system via SMS and the website to alert users about water shortages in the water treatment reservoir and when pH and temperature values are outside defined limits. The manuscript also presents preliminary results of the system: in the conducted experiments, correct monitoring of pH, chlorine, water level, and temperature parameters was observed. Notifications via SMS and the web were also successfully tested