Main image above is by Suzanne McDaniel, and was taken at Island End River in Chelsea, MA, part of the Mystic River watershed. Suzanne's photo was one of the winners of the MyRWA photo contest.

The Open Water Project aims to develop and curate open hardware and open software approaches to water monitoring. Our initial efforts have been focused on several projects:

The RIFFLE: An Open Source Datalogger. We are working to develop an open source hardware datalogger that can be placed in the field for extended deployments and measure common water parameters like temperature, conductivity, depth, and turbidity. Learn more at the Public Lab Riffle wiki.

The Coqui: using audio as a sensor data format. We're also exploring using audio frequencies to convey sensor readings -- like a modem, but even simpler -- in order to make sensor readings more accessible for people (or to enable data transmission over ubiquitous audio jacks on PCs and smartphones). Read more about this idea on the Public Lab Coqui wiki.

A mailing list. Sign up for the plots-water-quality email list, and participate in discussions about low-cost, open source water quality monitoring tools and techniques.