FloodWatch is a real time natural disaster early warning system. It provides simple and useful data over a wide area for researchers to track natural disaster events in real time and can serve as an early warning system in the hopes of saving lives. It was created for DeltaHacks 2 (Jan 2016) and won second place at the competition!
A large problem that current sensor networks have is that the data they collect is not easily accessible. Many times researchers will have to go out in the field to manually collect data from these devices before it is overwritten and lost. This is a very costly effort, however with FloodWatch using radio transmission in a network allows all data to be pipelined straight to a base station. This saves a lot of time and means no one will need to go into hazardous zones to collect data.
There are three main pieces to the FloodWatch system: Radio Transmission, Sensor arrays, and the software component. Each of these three pieces must work together flawlessly for FloodWatch to be able to accurately and consistently provide information.
We chose to use radio transmission to transmit data because of its simplicity and how cost effective it is. Using XBee modules with a 6 - 8 Kilometer range, the sensor modules can be placed in a mesh network that will allow data to be routed back to the base station for hundreds of kilometers. Another benefit to these is that they only cost around $30 at a consumer price level which makes the modules fairly affordable.
The sensor arrays are controlled by an Arduino and can allow any sensor to be attached to it. Anything from thermometers to seismometers to buoyancy meters can be attached depending on the area the devices are going to be deployed to. The Arduino will be controlling the XBee and the sensors which makes it very simple to send data back and forth. The power consumption is also fairly low which means that a battery could last a long time, or a small solar panel would be enough to keep the power flowing.
The base module is simply a computer that will allow all the data read by the sensor arrays to be collected at one station. This is currently a fairly basic program that will take all of the data that is read through the XBee module and will graph and record it. This also can be designed depending on what the sensor data needs to represent.
Below there are a few diagrams of the circuitry involved in setting up the modules, and how the modules look in person!
This is the diagram of the schematic we used to attach the XBee modules to the Arduino and the basic layout we are using for sensors.
This is an image of how large the actual modules are when completed. Included in this image is the Arduino connected to the XBee, included with this owuld be any sensors needed.