ISSN 2347 - 3983

Kartik Maheshwari et al., International Journal ofVolume

Emerging
9. Trends
No. 7, inJuly
Engineering
2021 Research, 9(7), July 2021, 1020 – 1024
International Journal of Emerging Trends in Engineering Research
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https://doi.org/10.30534/ijeter/2021/29972021

Water Quality Monitoring System Implemented With IoT

Kartik Maheshwari1, Adrija Chakraborty2
1
U.G. Student, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India, [email protected]
2
U.G. Student, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India, [email protected]

This paper establishes an IoT based system for monitoring

ABSTRACT various parameters related to water quality and management
of water resources. Our embedded system consists of various
Monitoring the quality of water and its proper management is sensors for measuring the flow and level of water along with
crucial for any industrial and economic application. The its TDS and turbidity for accessing the quality of the water.
global shortage of water demands a sustainable solution to The information obtained from these sensors is processed by
optimize its usage. The Internet of Things provides a robust the Arduino microcontroller, interfaced with an Ethernet
and cost-effective solution for real-time monitoring of various shield and is uploaded to the ThingSpeak IoT platform. Real
parameters of water. The paper aims to implement an time monitoring can be performed from its dashboard from
intelligent water quality monitoring system with the aid of anywhere in the world. Besides, warning notifications will be
IoT. The proposed system was successfully implemented to
sent to the user whenever the quality of water is poorer than
determine the turbidity, TDS, flow rate and the level of water
expected. In this way, we’ll be able to manage multiple water
for a given sample. The data obtained from the sensors are
reservoirs and access the water quality of the water.
uploaded to the ThingSpeak dashboard for online monitoring
purpose. Besides, an SMS alert is sent to the user whenever
the turbidity and TDS values have crossed the threshold limit 2. LITERATURE SURVEY
defined for good quality water.
The implementation of a robust and cost-effective water
Key words : IoT, sensors, TDS, ThingSpeak, turbidity. monitoring system demands a good level of research and
development. Many researchers have proposed different
1. INTRODUCTION models in order to implement such a system.
Mohammad Salah Uddin Chowdury et al. [2] have proposed a
Water is undoubtedly one of the most vital environmental system for monitoring the quality of water in a river with the
elements necessary to sustain our existence. Due to the aid of an embedded system consisting of wireless sensor
exponential growth in population and improper management network and IoT. Deep learning models have been used to
of water resources, there has been an acute shortage of water assess the quality of water and SMS alert is sent in case the
in different places around the globe. Besides, water pollution value of a sensor has crossed the threshold. Soundarya Pappu
has adversely affected the lives of several organisms and is et al. [3] have used a pH and a TDS sensor to determine the
one of the foremost reasons for rise in mortality rate and quality of water with the Arduino microcontroller and the
outbreak of diseases worldwide. Raspberry Pi3. K-means clustering algorithm is used to
Thus assessing the quality of water and its proper predict the quality of water based on the sensed values.
management is of paramount importance. In order to cope up Thinagaran Perumal, Md Nasir Sulaiman and Leong.C.Y [4]
with the huge demand for water, we need high-quality have implemented a system to monitor water level with IoT.
technology which can monitor the quality of water as well as The water level is measured using a sensor and is fed to a
ensure its availability. Such a system should be capable of web-based dashboard. Twitter is used for sending necessary
monitoring different parameters of water like TDS, turbidity alerts to the users. Nikhil Kumar Koditala and Purnendu
etc as well as measure the level and flow of water in different Shekar Pandey [5] have devised a model for regulating the
reservoirs for proper management. The traditional system for temperature of water by predicting the temperature of the
water quality monitoring and management relied heavily on surrounding environment using machine learning. Besides,
manual work with no real-time monitoring available. This the quality of water is analyzed by sensors measuring pH and
resulted in efficiency compromise and is not suitable to scale turbidity. The data is stored in Azure Event Hub and PowerBI
up well with the digital age. [1] is used for displaying the values obtained from the sensors.
Juan Huan et al. [6] have used STM32L151C8

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microcontroller for real-time monitoring of temperature, on the pressure that forces the through pipelines.
dissolved oxygen and pH of a water sample. A cloud-platform 2. The water level sensor consists of series of exposed
is designed using Java for real-time monitoring. parallel conductors, together acts as a variable resistor
Abbas Hussien Miry and Gregor Alexander Aramice [7] have whose resistance varies according to the water level. This
used ThingSpeak for monitoring and analysis of the TDS and sensor can be used to measure the water level, to monitor
Turbidity of water. When the values of these parameters are a sump pit, detect rainfall or detect leakage. It consists of
not within a normal range, a warning message is notified to a series of exposed parallel conductors, together acts as a
the user through IFTTT. Yiheng Chen and Dawei Han [8] variable resistor whose resistance varies according to the
have depicted how a water management system can be water level. The change in resistance corresponds to the
implemented through IoT in urban areas for developing a distance from the top of the sensor to the surface of the
smart city. They have measured different parameters of water water. The resistance is inversely proportional to the
like dissolved oxygen, turbidity, pH and conductivity and height of the water.
have also employed a camera system to get a video of the 3. A TDS meter is basically an electrical charge (EC) meter
surface of water. Sathish Pasika and Sai Teja Gandla [9] have whereby two electrodes equally spaced apart are inserted
devised an IoT system based on the ThingSpeak application into water and used to measure charge. The result is
for water quality monitoring. An Arduino Mega and interpreted by the TDS meter and converted into a ppm
NodeMCU microcontrollers are used to process the readings figure.
from the sensors and upload them to the ThingSpeak server. 4. The turbidity sensor detects water quality by measuring
Tongxin Shu et al. [10] have developed an energy efficient the level of turbidity. It is able to detect suspended
system for automatic water quality monitoring. They have particles in water by measuring the light transmittance
applied a data-driven adaptive sampling algorithm (DDASA) and scattering rate which changes with the amount of
in order to the efficiency of power consumption while total suspended solids (TSS) in water. As the TTS
acquiring the turbidity and dissolved oxygen of water. increases, the liquid turbidity level increases.
Kamarul Hafiz Kamaludin and Widad Ismail [11] have used The project implementation is divided in two main parts:
RFID and wireless sensor networks to perform real time hardware and the software implementation. The hardware
monitoring of a lake. The 920MHz Digi-mesh protocol is setup is shown in figure 1. It includes the Arduino Uno
used for its unique property of surpassing the signal interfaced with Ethernet Shield as microcontroller, Water
attenuation. flow sensor, Water level sensor, Turbidity and TDS sensor.
Water samples with different levels of impurities are used for
3. METHODOLOGY analysis. The microcontroller processes the data captured by
the turbidity, TDS and flow sensors and then sends the data to
To design the proposed water quality monitoring system the ThingSpeak Platform.
various water monitoring sensors and water quality
parameters were investigated.
The initial step is to determine the various parameters which
would be monitored for the assessment of the water quality
and whether the water quality is within the specified rules
and regulations of the World Health Organization(WHO). It
was determined that water parameters such as nitrate levels,
free chlorine concentration and dissolved oxygen cannot be
monitored easily and/or required frequent maintenance and
calibration to sustain accurate readings over long periods of
time. Hence this proposed project would not be feasible for
long-term real time water quality monitoring.
The sensors used for water quality monitoring and its
management are as follows:
1. The water flow sensor (YF-S201) is based on hall-effect
and this flow sensor consists of an obstruction rotor to
measure the flow rate. It operates on 5v dc voltage and
the hall-effect sensor gives the corresponding pulse
signal output. Each pulse corresponds to an approximate
flow of 2.25ml of liquid. Each pulse is a square wave and
is converted to L/min by using the formula: pulse
frequency (Hz)/7.5=flow rate in L/min. Velocity depends Figure 1: Hardware setup for the system

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If the turbidity and the TDS of the water sample are not within 4. RESULTS
the safety limit, a warning SMS is automatically sent to the
user through an applet made from the IFTTT (If This, Then The system implemented with the aid of IoT is ideal for real
That) platform. The IFTTT platform enables us to design time water monitoring. This is shown in the form of the
custom applets which can be triggered depending on a graphs that are generated by ThingSpeak. The turbidity of
specific condition. The configurations made in the IFTTT water is its clarity. If any mud, slit or sand particles etc. are
platform for sending SMS for high TDS and turbidity values mixed with the water, its quality varies. According to the
are shown in figures 2 and 3. water quality norms, normal water ranges from 0 NTU
(Nephelometric Turbidity Units) to 5 NTU and also
maximum of up to 5 NTU is permissible. If the water goes
over 6 NTU up to 3000 NTU it is classified as turbid or mud
mixed water. Figure: 4 shows the measurement of Turbidity
of water.
Total dissolved solids (TDS) comprise in organic salts
(principally calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium,
bicarbonate, chlorides, and sulphate) and some small
amounts of organic matter that are dissolved in water. Figure-
5: TDS level Measurement as per WHO (world Health
Organization) TDS ranges from 0 to above 1200. The TDS is
measured in ppm. TDS range less than 300ppm range is
considered as excellent for drinking water, 300- 400 ppm is
good, 600-900 ppm is fair, 900-1200 is poor and above 1200
is unacceptable. And figure 5 shows the measurement of TDS
range.

Figure 2: Applet for sending SMS for high TDS value

configured using IFTTT.

Figure 4: Graph showing variation of turbidity with time.

Figure 3: Applet for sending SMS for high turbidity value Figure 5: Graph showing variation of TDS with time.
configured using IFTTT.
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In order to evaluate the proposed system, data is collected

from Water Flow Sensor and all data recorded is transferred
to the ThingSpeak cloud . The data was divided into Flow
Rate (L/min), Current Liquid Flow (ml/sec). Output Liquid
Quantity (ml) to evaluate the system, as shown in figure 6.
Also there is ThingSpeak gauge, as shown in figure 7, is
proposed based on the transferred values by the water flow
sensor which helps user monitor and control the water flow
rate.

Figure 8: SMS notifications sent through IFTTT.

5. FUTURE SCOPE

This proposed system gives information to every user who

depend on that plant. We can use more sensors to detect more
parameters for the water quality analysis purposes. The
Figure 6: Graph showing variation of water flow rate with supply of water can be controlled by interfacing relay for easy
detection. This system can be used to monitor other water
time.
quality parameters. The operation is user-friendly. The
system can be expanded to monitor hydrologic, air pollution,
industrial and agricultural production and so on. It has
widespread application and extension value.

Applications:
 This system can be used for both commercial and
domestic purposes.
 Different water supply agencies.
 In health department for identification and cause of
water diseases.

6. CONCLUSION

This paper has successfully improvised an intelligent water

Figure 7:- Thingpeak Gauge for water flow sensor quality monitoring system. The system can be monitored from
a PC and is also capable of sending a smart alert through
When the turbidity and TDS values of water crosses the safety IFTTT. It is a low cost and robust model that does not require
limit, it triggers an event in the IFTTT platform to send people on duty. It provides quick and easy monitoring of
appropriate notifications to the user as shown in figure 8. turbidity and TDS level to ensure clean water is maintained
continuously. ThingSpeak has provided a suitable
environment for analyzing and comparing the sensor data as
observed in graphics and smart alerts. As per the obtained
results, the proposed system can be considered as suitable
water quality monitoring system. Our system has made water
quality testing more economical, convenient and reliable with
timely feedback.

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