RESEARCH PROJECT

GALLERY

WATER WARDEN SURVEY

CHALLENGE: Dive into Ocean Exploration Problems & Develop Solutions 🌊🤖

BACKGROUND

Our coaches encouraged us to focus on creating a working prototype rather than just coming up with ideas on paper. To begin, we explored the different layers of the ocean and the challenges faced by explorers in each zone.

We brainstormed several ideas, such as:

Abyssal Zone: A remotely operated vehicle (ROV) that generates oxygen through electrolysis for longer and deeper dives.
Hadal Zone: A hyperbaric chamber designed to collect samples from extreme depths safely.
Sunlight Zone: Using wave energy to recharge boats and submarines.

RESEARCH

During our research, we came across a compelling TED Talk by Matt Rutherford, the first sailor to circumnavigate the Americas using a sailboat. Throughout his journey, he encountered more trash than food in the ocean, which inspired him to establish the Ocean Research Project to tackle ocean pollution.

We also investigated the origins of trash along the South American coast and were surprised to learn that a significant portion originates in Southeast Asia. This debris travels thousands of miles over months or even years before breaking down and eventually washing up on the South American coastline.

Focusing on solutions, we decided to target the Sunlight Zone and develop a solar-powered buoy designed to detect trash and monitor pollution. This innovative solution allows us to create a functional prototype while addressing a critical challenge in ocean exploration.

We created a survey to ensure we were on the right track with our project. The survey results confirmed that climate change and ocean pollution are the biggest concerns for most of the people we reached out to. This feedback validated the importance of our focus and inspired us to continue addressing these critical issues.

WATER WARDEN - DESIGN

Our team began by exploring microcontrollers, and since some of us were already familiar with Arduino, it seemed like a great starting point. We discovered that Arduino is open-source, easy to program, and has a lot of community support with a wide range of sensors available. However, its small processor couldn’t handle tasks like image processing or support a camera. To overcome this, we researched and found the ESP32, a more powerful microcontroller that supports a camera module. The best part? It’s compatible with the Arduino IDE, allowing us to stick with the tools we already knew while significantly upgrading our project’s capabilities.

WATER WARDEN - BUILDOUT 🚀

Our project went through 8 amazing versions as we kept improving and testing. Here’s how we did it:

Version 1.0: Started with the basics—Arduino R3 and a power system with a solar panel, battery charger, LiPO battery, and voltage converter. 🌞🔋
Version 1.1: Added sensors to measure water parameters like pH, turbidity, and TDS. 🌊
Version 1.2: Upgraded to measure air stuff! We used the BME280 sensor for temperature, humidity, air pressure, and altitude. 🌡️🌫️
Version 1.3: Added a GPS to track location (latitude and longitude), speed, date, and time. 🗺️📍
Version 1.4: Added a gyroscope and accelerometer to measure motion and tilt. 🌀
Version 1.5: Leveled up to the Arduino R4 and added a cool LED matrix display. 💡🖥️
Version 1.6: BIG upgrade! Added an ESP32 Camera for taking pictures. 📸
Version 1.7: Made it neater by soldering everything onto a PCB board and creating a single integrated circuit. ⚙️🔧
Version 1.8: Final step—assembled everything and sealed the buoy, making it waterproof and ready for the ocean! 🌊💪

Now, we’re ready to put our buoy to the test and collect data from the Sunlight Zone!

FUTURE ROADMAP 🚀

We’re super excited about what’s next for our project! Here are our big plans:

Wireless Data Transfer: Make the buoy send data wirelessly so we can receive it in real-time without needing to retrieve the buoy. 📡💾
Set Up a Server: Build a server to store and organize all the data our buoy collects, so it’s easy to access and analyze. 🖥️📊
Collaborate with Citizen Scientists: Work with communities using CitizenScience.gov to share data and make a bigger impact together! 🌍🤝

These upgrades will make our buoy more powerful and useful for ocean research. Stay tuned!

TEAMWORK: Who Did What?

Our team divided the tasks to make the project a success, with everyone contributing their skills. Tejas and Viraj led the research, while Nirwaan and Ryan focused on circuit buildout and programming (with a little help from ChatGPT!). Viraj and Vihaan took charge of prototype design and testing, and both Viraj and Ryan worked on developing the AI model (YOLO). By working together and combining our efforts, we turned our ideas into reality, and it was so much fun collaborating, building, and testing along the way!

FEEDBACK

We reached out to some really smart experts to get their feedback on our project, and we were super excited to hear back from Mr. Alan Papalia, who has a Ph.D. from MIT in Marine Robotics, and Mr. Giuseppe Suaria, a Research Fellow at CNR-ISMAR. They thought our project could make an impact and said collecting sensor data is super important. They liked that we used open-source technology and said it’s very possible to train AI for our project. They also suggested that we send data every six hours to make it more useful. Their biggest advice was to find a local partner or group who could help us keep working on the project and make it even better. We think that’s a great idea!

So, after getting advice from the experts, we reached out to Dr. Swarna Muthukrishnan from Clean Ocean Action and Dr. Alexander Clark from Skidaway Institute of Oceanography. They know a lot about the ocean and really care about keeping the water clean. We were super excited to talk to them because we wanted to see how our project could help with their research. We also hoped they could give us more ideas to make our design better and make sure the data we collect is actually useful for scientists.

Dr. Swarna thought our buoy’s data collection was really cool! She suggested we add local storage so the buoy could save data while it’s in the water, and then we could look at it later when we bring it back to land. Dr. Alexander had a great idea too—he told us to add some weight to the bottom of the buoy to make it more stable in the water. We thought both ideas were awesome, so we added them to our buoy in version 1.10! We’re really excited to keep working with both of them and hopefully test our buoy in the ocean soon!

We also created a survey to get feedback from users, and most people thought our project was an awesome idea! They loved the choice of technology and thought the sensors we picked were super cool. The biggest takeaway from the survey was that people want to see this idea mass-produced so it can have a bigger impact. We’re excited about that!

DATA VISUALIZATION EXAMPLE 1

We used the Water Warden Buoy to collect data from a nearby lake, and it saved everything to the SD card. Then, we uploaded the data and used ChatGPT to help us make some cool graphs, charts, and even a mock app to show what the data might look like in real life! It was so exciting to see the possibilities—like tracking pollution levels, water quality, or even temperature changes over time. Just imagine how researchers could use this to understand lakes and oceans better. The visualizations made all that data super easy to understand and look awesome too! 🚀📊

DATA VISUALIZATION EXAMPLE 2

Below is an example of a heatmap application that displays various parameters from the test data. Ths kind of visualization helps identify problem areas in a given area of the water body.

CONCLUSION

The ocean is HUGE, but we’ve only explored about 5% of it, and exploring it is super expensive! That’s a big deal because the ocean is so important—all life on Earth depends on water. That’s where our project, Water Warden, comes in. It helps find trash and pollution before they float too far or break down into tiny pieces. It’s like a guide for researchers, showing them problem areas, just like how buoys guide boats to marinas. Plus, it saves time and money for people studying the ocean!

What makes Water Warden awesome? It’s cheap, easy to build, and can be used almost anywhere. It collects important data that scientists can use to better understand pollution and climate change. Best of all, it’s open source, so anyone can help improve it or use it for their own projects. Oh, and here’s a fun fact: we used a dog fence window for the outer shell! How cool is that?

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