DEVELOPMENT OF A LOW COST AUTOMATIC WATER LEVEL MONITORING SYSTEM

Abstract

Water is a very necessary and important factor in agricultural and farm production and is a key of our quality of life as well. Monitoring water level of a water source, such as dams, water tank or bore-well etc., plays a key role in agricultural management and development. If a water level drops below the threshold level for pumping in a water body, the pump motor may get damaged due to dry running. In such case monitoring water level becomes necessary task. Water engineers and so many other disciplines that study water, rainfall and so many other things related to water resources especially rivers, seas, lakes are faced with the challenge of acquiring quality and accurate data which is one of the motivations of this research. This work aimed at development of a low cost automatic water level monitoring system (WLMS). The major components used for the development of the WLMS were Arduino board, ultrasonic sensor, Xbee transceiver and personal computer. The automatic water level monitoring system was realized using an Ultrasonic sensor attached to an Arduino Uno to process the analog signal coming from the sensor into a useable digital value of distance. The level of the water was determined by the sensor’s height with respect to the river bed minus the sensed distance between the sensor and the surface of the river. Changes in the water level will be displayed on a personal computer. The developed system was effective. With the Arduino River level recorder developed, water level data can be easily accessed from rivers, lakes and oceans.