Innovation project

At the beginning of the semester, we had a presentation about different projects suggested by the department and by some industrial partners of the university. We had a very short time to select the project that we wanted to undertake and to create teams. This project had to be carried out in parallel of our classes.

​​

​

Description

​​

Covering around 70% of the Earth, oceans are the largest water bodies with a diverse ecosystem and a rich natural resource. However, over the last few decades, studies have shown that ocean pollution is increasing due to reasons such as industrial waste, mining activities and marine dumping. This is a
major environmental and social problem and could affect economic activities like fisheries and
aquaculture. Thus, the development of a water quality measuring device that effectively and quickly
detects worrisome levels of pollution has become essential for the management of our oceans and
coastal areas. Conventional monitoring systems are expensive, time consuming, lack real-time results
and require minimal human intervention. Our idea is to design a buoy that will embed several sensors
that will be able to monitor different parameters regarding the quality of the sea in real time. The
information gathered will be sent through a wireless communication using Bluetooth technology and a LoRa network to a server. Finally, this data will be displayed on a dashboard or via an Android application in order to alert competent authorities and professionals to make informed and quick appropriate responses in terms of ocean management. This paper describes the different choices we made in relation to the components, the communication standards adopted, power supply architectures and potential application scenarios. The final potential users of the prototype will be the "Observatoire Océanologique de Banyuls/mer ", rental boat companies and any concerned citizen.

​

​

​

Synthesis and self-assessment

​​

This project was very challenging. We had to deal with almost every part of the IoT chain. We started with identifying a real problem and developed a solution from scratch. We were not guided during this project and had to be very innovative. We managed to put in common our knowledge allowing us to find a way to solve our problems. We would have needed just a little more time to make few improvement. Undertaking this project was a real plus for the ISS formation because we had the opportunity to practice with almost every subjects studied in class, even and especially with the human oriented parts.