I started and currently lead the Water Quality Sensor System project with Clemson Engineers for Developing Communities (CEDC) as part of the Technical Solutions program. The project began as effort to address gaps in water quality monitoring within resource-limited and/or underserved communities. After defining the initial vision and scope, I was able to gather a multidisciplinary team of five additional members to continue development, research, and planning under the structured CEDC project framework.
CEDC projects follow a deliberate, multi-phase development process that emphasizes planning, sustainability, leave-behind documentation, and long-term community impact before technical implementation. The goal of this project is to design a low-cost, modular water quality monitoring system intended to provide continuous insight into changes in water quality. Rather than certifying water as potable, the system is designed to function as an early-warning and decision-support tool that can indicate treatment failure, contamination risk, or infrastructure degradation. This project aims to target communities that currently have underdeveloped or even no current water quality testing procedures between the site of water collection and the point of consumption.
Project development follows CEDC's project lifecycle. This protocol breaks up the project into four phases (0–3), ranging from early project planning through deployment, delivery, and long-term maintenance.
CEDC Project Lifecycle
Phase 0 focused on establishing the foundational goals, scope, stakeholders, risks, and assumptions of the project. The project charter is a high-level planning document and not a finalized technical design.
From this phase, the team recognized that there is a continuous need for low-cost water quality monitoring in regions where conventional laboratory testing and industrial systems are infeasible due to cost, infrastructure, or technical expertise.
Early planning considered the possibility of a modular sensor system that could measure up to the following parameters: turbidity, pH, conductivity, TDS, temperature, and chlorine residual. No hardware or firmware development took place in Phase 0.
Primary Contributors: Camren Khoury, Noah Friedman, Ata Ozer
Project Charter Cover Page
Project Charter Excerpt
Phase 1 involved an examination of current water quality testing practices, low-cost sensors, and automated systems in use in both developed and developing regions.
The literature review helped to focus the project scope on the gaps that exist in existing solutions, especially where contamination tends to happen in water distribution systems after the water has been treated. There was a focus on trend detection and not certification for regulatory purposes.
Results from this phase have now become the definitive guide for project management direction instead of the initial assumptions that were framed in Phase 0.
Primary Contributors: Camren Khoury
Literature Review Cover Page
Literature Review Excerpt
In parallel with early planning and research, a separate team was tasked with developing a data visualization dashboard. This effort was led by undergraduate computer science and computer engineering students and focused on establishing baseline data handling, visualization approaches, and user interaction flow.
At the current stage, the dashboard operates using simulated data generated through a structured spreadsheet that approximates expected sensor outputs. This method allows core dashboard functionality and visualizations to be assembled and reviewed ahead of live sensor integration.
View the Dashboard GitHub Repository
Primary Contributors: Matthew Mugrage, Camren Khoury, Yordan Zlatev, Justin Keller
Early Data Dashboard Prototype
While detailed system design has not yet begun, several early directional decisions guide future development. The current candidate microcontroller platform is the ESP32-WROOM, selected for its affordability, wireless capabilities, and community support.
Additional processing or networking support using a Raspberry Pi is under consideration but has not been finalized. Sensor selection remains conceptual and will be validated through testing, availability analysis, and alignment with literature findings.
Early MCU Consideration
Future phases will focus on detailed system design, hardware prototyping, firmware development, calibration procedures, and controlled field testing. These sections will be expanded as the project transitions from planning into implementation. The next phase in development will be Phase 2: Design & Testing, which will be finalized by the end of the Spring 2026 semester.