Potsdam Water Sentinel will develop and demonstrate an adaptive LoRaWAN-based water quality monitoring system for the Raquette River watershed and rural Northern New York communities. Water quality can change rapidly during storms, snowmelt, road-salt pulses, runoff, and contaminant transport events, while conventional grab sampling is costly and often misses short-duration changes. The project addresses this gap by creating a low-cost, field-ready network that combines commercial water-quality probes with electrochemical/nanomaterial sensor modules for targeted contaminants, including metal ions and other indicators.
The project will build modular nodes with weatherproof packaging, battery/solar operation, field-serviceable connectors, low-power firmware, and interfaces for water level, temperature, pH, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, oxidation-reduction potential, and add-on contaminant sensors. The data system will extend an existing LoRaWAN, ChirpStack, MQTT, PostgreSQL, and dashboard platform to support calibration status, site maps, alerts, datasets, and adaptive sampling. Nodes will use link quality, battery state, precipitation context, and water-quality changes to adjust sampling frequency, LoRa settings, and message priority.
A pilot deployment at 3-5 watershed locations will evaluate packet delivery, alert latency, power use, maintenance needs, sensor agreement with reference measurements, and dashboard usability. Expected outcomes include a demonstration-ready kit, validated field data, deployment and calibration guidance, a cost and maintenance model, and a commercialization package for municipalities, watershed groups, utilities, farms, environmental consultants, and water-technology partners. The project will reduce monitoring barriers, support higher-resolution water-resource decisions, train students in field-ready water technologies, and position the platform for follow-on implementation and commercialization in New York State.