You ever stood by a river after a long night of rain?
The air smells like wet soil, frogs are losing their minds, and the water looks calm… until it’s not.
That’s where this project started.
One evening last monsoon, I watched a lot of news regarding river flood in some states , bikes were stalled, people were pushing carts through knee-deep water, and the power cut out.
So yeah, that’s what pushed me to build a river water monitoring and flood warning system using TDK Ultrasonic Sensors .
I came across the TDK In-Reach Ultrasonic Sensing Challenge on Element14 and thought, “Wait… that’s exactly the kind of tech that could help.”
Perfect for tracking how close the water is to trouble.it could give people a few extra hours to move to safety. And in a flood, a few hours can make a huge difference.
(Image: TDK kit photo)
Here’s what I’m building:
- A TDK USSM ultrasonic sensors mounted above a river or Water body.
- An Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 that reads water levels from sensors and sends data to Google Sheets (yep, good old Sheets—simple, free, works).
- A Google Apps Script that emails alerts when levels go past a threshold.
So basically, it’s a mini early warning station in a waterproof box that can be deployed in quick pace to any desired location for flood tracking.
Think of it as the river’s way of texting you: “Hey buddy, I’m rising fast.”
I’m not a big corporation or a disaster management expert. I’m just someone who got tired of watching small floods cause big chaos.
People lose things they can’t replace—photos, furniture, sometimes entire homes—because no one tells them in time.
If a simple sensor and a Wi-Fi board can give them that heads-up… why not build it?
What Makes This Special
This isn’t just about distance sensing. It’s about turning that distance into action.
Every reading is logged, timestamped, and compared against a threshold stored in a Google Sheet.That can be used as Data Analysis also in future to predict floods even before water level crosses the danger mark for flood.
What’s Next
Over the next few blogs, I’ll be posting my full build journey here on Element14.
Here’s my rough plan:
- Blog 2 The Flow Chart of Data in My Flood Warning System
- Blog 3: Wiring the Brains Hooking Up the TDK Ultrasonic Sensors
- Blog 4: Code walkthrough + Google Sheet connection.
- Blog 5: Testing the Flood Warning System by prototype assembly, Final build, results, and thoughts on real-world deployment.
Final Thought
If this project works—even in a small way—it could be used by anyone living near a water body.
A farmer. A fisherman. A small-town engineer trying to protect their community.
