Development of a wireless sensor network based water quality monitoring and notification system

In this paper, we present a water quality monitoring and notification system. It is also integrated with a consumer alert system on the safety of the water in accordance with the WHO water quality standard. The consumer alert system is made up of a buzzer for notification, a red-Light Emitting Diode (LED) and green-LED as an indicator for unsafe water and safe water respectively. Five sources of contaminants in water namely, soil, chlorine, vinegar, salt, washing powder and their combination were used in this to validate the performance of the system. Wireless communication between the measuring subsystem and the analysis and notification subsystem was established for mobility using radio frequency modules. The error in measurements and the consumption risk per water parameter were calculated on MS Excel as part of the analysis and presented in this document. This paper also presents an added functionality by using a Light Dependent Resistor (LDR) for turbidity measurement and LEDs in the notification subsystem. The notification system accommodates people with disabilities as the buzzer can be heard by those who can't see, and the LEDs can be seen by those who can't hear. The developed system was compared for functionality and performance using the quality of the results measured in comparison with the expected results.