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
Showcase
Highlighting projects we’re working on and gadgets we’ve built.
#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]
SDI-12 sensor display
Whenever we install a sensor in the field, it’s always helpful to make sure it is reading properly before connecting it to the datalogger. Having a display to show the live data from a sensor is also helpful when doing calibration and testing of the sensor in the lab. We use a variety of sensors from Decagon Devices. Their high-quality, research grade sensors output the data in two format...[Read More]
Undervoltage protection switch
I recently built a device that is very useful but is hard to find commercially, and even information was scarce about how to build one myself, so I’m posting the details here in hopes that it helps anyone who might be looking for a similar device. It’s called an undervoltage protection switch. In Europe, it’s commonly called a no-volt release switch. What does it do? It is bas...[Read More]
Portable soil respirometer system
After having great success with the laboratory multi-chamber soil respirometer system, we built a portable version that could be deployed in the field for in-situ measurements. It still uses the same Licor LI-840 gas analyzer system and a smaller Arduino controller, based on the Sparkfun ArduinoPro board since it has better power efficiencies than the Uno, which is important for battery-powered o...[Read More]
Multi-chamber soil respirometer
Commercial systems that measure carbon dioxide for soil respiration experiments can be very expensive, but we built one for a fraction of the cost. The controller is based on an Arduino Uno, with a datalogger shield for storing the collected data, and a Macetech Centipede Shield. The measurement system is a Licor LI-840 CO2 analyzer which outputs its data every second using XML strings via an ...[Read More]
