Low-cost Devices to Monitor Water Quality Combined with Data Analysis (Location: Chiang Kan, Thailand)

Monitoring and controlling water quality is one of the essential things that must be done so that water remains safe for consumption and use. Only relying on lab-scale devices to evaluate water quality is no longer suitable for modern rapid assessment. Those methods are mostly time-consuming, costly, and require skilled users. Water quality test kits are currently used to cover the drawback of laboratory equipment in the field. However, this method lack precision due to color reading. This research attempts to transform analog color to corresponding RGB values using image processing methods and data analysis processes to provide precision values of water parameters. A set of water quality test strips photos is used and divided into training and testing groups. This method was shown an accuracy of nitrate, total hardness, total alkalinity, and pH of 0.66%, 0,89%, 0,89%, and 0,80%, respectively. In addition, the presence of geo-tagging improves the traceability and reliability of this method. This technique allows integration with cloud data systems, accelerating the data transfer process in the future.