DIY: Solar Powered Flood Monitoring Systems

A team at Chile’s National Research Center for Integrated Natural Disaster Management (CIGIDEN) has built a solar powered IoT system to monitor temperature and humidity levels in the Ramon Ravine and ultimately help serve as flood early warning system. Voltaic solar panels power the microcontroller, xBee radio and GPRS modem for the sink node.

According to Chrsitian Oberli, “information is gathered by small radios equipped with temperature and humidity sensors, as well as other variables, that report their readings to an online database on the Internet, which is regularly checked by the early warning system.” The system is set up to give alerts in the case of flooding or swells.

Here’s a pic of the module.