Ike Wai

‘Ike Wai is a collaborative project between many STEM disciplines to monitor, analyze, and sustain the quality of water throughout the Hawaiian Islands. ‘Ike Wai’s mission is to secure Hawai’i’s future water security through an integrated program of research, education, community engagement, and decision support.

We are currently developing a water monitoring system called the Downwell Remote Operated Platform (DROP) module, containing three design modules: Chassis, Sensors, and Software. The Chassis team is developing a chassis which must not only house the entire unit, including the solar panel, battery, and electronics, but also lower the Sensor Module into the well. Using a Raspberry Pi Zero W, the Software team is developing the code to control the chassis motor, collect sensor data using I2C, and upload the information to an online database.

The Sensor team is developing a water-monitoring module that monitors temperature, water flow direction, bio-contaminants, and salinity. Salinity is monitored indirectly using a conductivity sensor made from polymer-based resistors created in the lab. Although the system’s prototype is nearly complete, the students are constantly seeking to improve the current system in both performance and cost using methods like 3D printing to expedite the development of revisions.

Since I have just joined this project this January, I have been assigned to the programming team where I will be creating a database and write scripts to convert data pulled from the DROP module into .json files. I am looking foward to this project as it aligns with my interests in sustainability and learning new techonologies such as creating a database interesting.

You can learn more about the project from this website