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

The Open Water Project aims to

• develop and curate open hardware and open software useful for water-related applications
• build and facilitate data infrastructures that allow for easier sharing of water data
• encourage the growth of communities focused on 'free and open' approaches to water science
• support ongoing work by grassroots communities interested in their own local water quality issues

To this end, we've been focusing on several initiatives, in particular:

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 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 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.