[Pool Water Monitoring] #25 - Conclusions

Hi all. Hope everyone is safe and well.

Conclusion

This was an awesome project.

When I started it, I knew nothing of LoRa, or LoRaWAN or Arduino IoT Cloud. It was something I was keen to try and this project was an opportunity.

It really took me outside of my comfort zone. I'm a software person, a computer science engineer, and always tried to stay away from hardware, although my dabblings with Arduinos, ESP32, etc...

I had nothing dangerous to measure nearby (fortunately), but, a pool.

It's important to measure the quality of the pool water before swimming, so, I took on the challenge.

LoRa was something new to me (programming wise), I had to read and learn what it was, how was connected to LoRaWAN .

Arduino IoT Cloud was a disappointment. I did try it first with an Arduino Nano 33 IoT and was successful.  I tough that using an Arduino MKR 1300 WAN was the same, but - and after reading - I know now that it is not.

To be able to use it, I need to use a LoRa gateway, but, on my side of the city, I can't reach any. They exist in my city, but on the other side of it - far from me and in the other side of a hill.

I did also learn about arduino to arduino communication. That was something I already had tried, but didn't new about several USB ports on the MKR. I hadn't had the need for them.

One thing that I'm glad was to have learned about the I2C protocol. Until now, I tough It was some protocol that sensors use and was only to them. I was thrilled

Next steps

Although the project in Element14 ends here, I'm going to keep it running for a few more weeks or, if I can solve the battery drain, keep it to measure the water quality during the summer season. It would be nice to have something like this to monitor the water.

It was something I wanted to do for some time now, but now that I've done it, won't wast it away.

Regrets

For some reason - probably because it was a cheap Chinese sensor - I wasn't able to calibrate the PH probe. I did try during several days, using several ways, but the values that should be displayed for the calibration never got them. I given up on that, but still will try. I won't have the probe sit there for nothing.

And this is it.

Hope everyone had fun doing the project like I did and I'm sure we all learned something. I know I have - not only by developing mine, but by reading yours. There are some neat projects here and some "crazy" (in a good sense) ideas out there to solve our world problems.

Keep doing what you do, with all the passion that you and I have.

Best regards

"Human knowledge belongs to the world!"