Public Lab Research note


Oil and Gas Hardware Fellow Status Update: Week 6!

by wmacfarl | October 28, 2019 22:26 28 Oct 22:26 | #21321 | #21321

Over the last week, I have continued working on documenting the DF Robot liquid sensors. Two weeks ago I wrote an overview guide, describing the general process of getting these sensors to work with the Arduino and getting basic data off of them.

With this general guide in place, I revised my guide for the turbidity sensor to be focused on the parts of the process that are specific to the turbidity sensor. This guide also serves as a template for documenting other sensors going forward, including the pH sensor, which I wrote a guide for last week.

I'm really excited about continuing to document the rest of the DF Robot liquid sensors individually and to use all of this sensor-specific documentation as a platform for communicating the fundamentals of sensor-based data-collection in a really hands-on way.

Now that we have some good guidelines on getting basic data off of the sensors I've also been researching and thinking a lot about how to calibrate and otherwise make sense of this data. In particular, I've been looking into how to calibrate the turbidity sensor and wondering whether we can relate its measurements to measurements taken with a Secchi disk -- a common and cheap non-digital turbidity measrurement tool.

We are also in the process of planning an Open-Hour call with all of the oil and gas water fellows and other members of the public lab community to discuss issues related to water quality monitoring and oil and gas industry contamination.

We are still in the planning process for this event -- the conversation couldgo in many directions, according to the interests of the participants, but discussion topics might include:

  • Different ways to collect and use water quality data
  • How water quality measurements relate to oil and gas industry impacts
  • Creating community engagement in water quality monitoring
  • Related stories and projects from Public Lab community members

Please get in touch if you have any interest in joining us for this upcoming call or have particular topics or questions you'd like to see addressed! Or if you have any questions about any of the sensor documentation or suggestions for how to make this work more useful or usable in any way.


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