Engineering Building a peripheral for obtaining data from water

[Ranger1222]

Homework Statement

How do I build a device that can allow me to extract important data from water with existing equipment?

Relevant Equations

N/A

I'm working for a project with a goal of analyzing data obtained from a device that extract data from bodies of water, such as bacterias found, the chemical levels, etc. I've been instructed to use existing equipment for it to work. What I've been recommended to use include: bateries, solar panels, sensors, wires, and a GPS. It must also have floatability so that it doesn't sink, which is where the GPS comes into play in case it sails off somewhere. With said data, it must be stored in the device so that it can be later transmited to a program to present the information. Anyone with knowledge on engineering and science has an idea on how to build one?

 

[berkeman]

Welcome to PF.

Are you going to actually build and test this device, or is this a paper project? Can you post links to the datasheets for the sensors you need to interface with?

I'm not clear whether you are supposed to transmit the data from the floating device back to a base station via a wired network, or just store the information for later upload. How is the device controlled and steered?

Do you have experience with microcontrollers (uCs) like the Arduino and similar? What programming languages have you used to control such uCs?

 

[Ranger1222]

Welcome to PF.

Are you going to actually build and test this device, or is this a paper project? Can you post links to the datasheets for the sensors you need to interface with?

I'm not clear whether you are supposed to transmit the data from the floating device back to a base station via a wired network, or just store the information for later upload. How is the device controlled and steered?

Do you have experience with microcontrollers (uCs) like the Arduino and similar? What programming languages have you used to control such uCs?

It's a device that I have to build based on existing tools. As for storing the information, the data extract must be stored into the device so that it can be transmited into the program. I'm not sure if it should be through wired or wireless connection though I heard that wireless is less tedious. As for how it's controlled, that's still in planning stages, which is something I have to discuss a bit with my instructor soon, so I'll let you know if they respond, and it's my first time hearing about those controllers. As for languages, I only know the ones that I'll used to create the program that'll present the data (through graphs potentially) using HTML, JS and CSS for front end, and probably Python and Django (or PHP) for back end.

 

[hutchphd]

So this is a semester project?? Any projected budget constraints? Expected lifetime of device (consumables?) ? Single modality /multiple modality?
It might be useful to initially think smaller. I would like a device to measure and characterize my first morning cup of coffee before I sip it. Data will appear on my computer remotely. Then scale it up appropriately.

 

[Nik_2213]

First things first: What is your sensors' data format ? Does eg pH, Dissolved Oxygen, 'cloudiness' devices have a biddable printer port or other digital interface ?

When you can get data from probes to ports, you may then consider how a 'playing-card' micro-computer can log GPS and data set to eg an SD card, 'cc' to base station via appropriate data link. And, yes, logging if that data set was transferred...