H2O Sense: a WSN-based monitoring system for fish tanks

Abstract

In oceans, fish usually live in an environment that is best suited for their growth. When these fish are introduced into man-made environment, e.g. in mariculture and aquaculture set-ups, the physical parameters might stray from their ideal values, resulting in improper growth and undesired outcomes. Hence, to prevent these undesirable outcomes, continuous monitoring of the physical parameters of the water such as pH, temperature and dissolved oxygen is required. In this work, we present a system called H2O sense, which continuously monitors the physical parameters of the water in tanks and alerts the user in case the values deviate from ideal. We use only low-power, low-cost hardware and open-source development tools, which makes the system easily applicable to various settings. The deployment of our system in the Maritime Laboratory of the University of Namibia shows its efficacy. Furthermore, we evaluate in detail the performance of our system and discuss its applicability in similar challenged environments.