Emil Sekerinski, Runze Zhao (2022). Re:mote - Open-source Software and Low-cost Hardware Infrastructure for Water Quality and Tracking. Proceedings of the GWF Annual Open Science Meeting, May 16-18, 2022.

The re:mote software and hardware infrastructure comprises motes with various (commercial and research prototype) sensors for collecting water quality data, a mesh network connecting motes through a base station to a server, a time series database and a (multi-lingual) web server running on the server hardware, and notebooks for analyzing data programmatically. Our open-source solution involves a progressive web application and a network of sensors that allows for long-term continuous monitoring of various water-quality parameters such as dissolved oxygen, pH levels, and temperature. We built the scalable network using low-cost IoT devices that connect over a long-range mesh network. The devices transmit data to a gateway that relays the sensor data to a server over a 3G/4G connection. We host the server on a Raspberry Pi that can handle as many as 450 concurrent sensor data transmissions. We store the data in an InfluxDB time-series database, and we process, analyze, and visualize it on the web application. We propose an additional water quality monitoring solution that allows for in-person sensor data to be collected using a mobile device over Bluetooth. Only open-source software and low-cost hardware are used, allowing the setup to be used for education and maintained by communities.

First Author: Emil Sekerinski
Additional Authors: Runze Zhao, McMaster University