Welcome to EnviroDIY, a community for do-it-yourself environmental science and monitoring. EnviroDIY is part of WikiWatershed, an initiative of Stroud Water Research Center designed to help people advance knowledge and stewardship of fresh water. New to EnviroDIY? Start here
Blog
DIY Christmas!
Just for something completely different: DIY Christmas! While we’re using Arduinos and sensors to monitor the natural world, other people are using them to make awesome choreographed Christmas light displays. I have to admit, my husband got sucked in by GE’s iTwinkle Christmas Tree and thinks it’s pretty cool that he can control the color of its lights via Bluetooth. But we just have nothing...[Read More]
Stone Control Structure – Flume
What is a good way to gage a stream without using a weir or an engineered flume? How about this stone control structure / flume? Having a stable control is invaluable for developing a good stream flow rating curve. A rating curve relates the depth of the stream to the flow at a particular point. By a stable control I am referring to a cross-section of stream that will not change over time due ...[Read More]
midStream – Making real time data publicly available
At the Stroud Water Research Center, one of our first priorities for the Arduino based sensors that Shannon Hicks has been developing has been to make the raw data publicly available online in a readily sharable format. For now, we’re formatting our data as WaterML 1.0 and sharing it as a WaterOneFlow webservice. WaterML and the webservice specifications were originally developed by the Co...[Read More]
What do we do with the data?
Introduction to world of data management Shannon Hicks, my coworker at the Stroud Water Research Center, has written several posts about the cool data loggers and sensor packages she has developed here. But, unfortunately, just designing a new instrument and deploying it in the watershed doesn’t answer questions about watershed science. To get the answers we’re looking for we need to b...[Read More]
#StormSnakes for Stormwater Run-off
Greetings, I’m Leslie Birch and I’m an anomaly — a tech artist with a strong interest in water and other environmental causes. Currently I’m at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education as a LandLab artist, tasked with creating an artistic intervention for stormwater run-off at their site. The tech side of me wanted to do something with monitoring, while the artist ...[Read More]
Ultrasonic water depth sensor
We have been using submersible pressure transducers for water level measurements for many years, but some of our installations are in areas with very shallow water that might freeze during the winter. Most pressure transducers will be damaged if they are in water that freezes, so we’ve been experimenting with an ultrasonic rangefinder that will allow us to measure the water level from above...[Read More]
