10th July 2009

Enviromental Monitoring

Product Range: SQ2010

The Background: The river rose and fell quite visibly through out the year, so a local environmental group set up a study to find out just how much it varied and to correlate data against the amount of rainfall.

Application: Monitoring the level of the river against the rainfall.

The Problem: To have a water proof system to stand up to the environmental changes on a river bank with continued year round monitoring that can be accessed remotely.

The Squirrel Solution: Grant Instruments supplied the Squirrel SQ2010 data logger in a weather proof enclosure fitted with a solar panel to recharge an external battery.

This was sited on the river bank with a raingauge, temperature sensors, humidity and pressure and than a depth sensor was installed in the centre of the river bed. Also fitted into the enclosure is a GSM modem for remote communications.

Hourly readings are being logged of air and water temperature, humidity, rainfall river depth and barometric pressure.

Grant Downloader is used to automatically contact the logger at a set time each day to download the data, which is then transferred to a Web site so that it can be accessed via a PC connected to the internet.

The Benefits: Analysis of the data shows that the river starts to rise after approximately two hours of rainfall.

A very significant amount of rain fell in July 2007, over 72mm in under nine hours, the river rose from it's regular level of 250mm to over 2 metres!

Unfortunately the river was no longer at the bottom of the garden, it was now flowing though the house.