Testing and calibration – Part 1

Well, we’ve encountered our first big hurdle with our water quality mapping. We’ve been so focused on getting the technology connections to work (Arduino -> Phone app -> Server) and getting our kayak mount system to work, that we’ve neglected data quality a bit. We’ve been operating on the assumption that we don’t have any electronic inference issues in our device and that the accuracy specs from Atlas Scientific are true.

We found out that we’ve got a problem somewhere.

Before heading out to the Milwaukee River, our first “big” sampling destination, we headed up to the Burnt Village put-in on Highway N on the Bark River with both boats and a borrowed YSI probe to compare our numbers to. With everything mounted on the kayaks, we all got in the water and started comparing numbers. Our first disappointment was that the Atlas Scientific arrays didn’t match the YSI values at all — not even close. And, even more disappointing, the Atlas Scientific arrays didn’t match each other — even after having been calibrated using the same techniques and same solutions earlier that day.

Time to hit the drawing board…