Poster: In-situ Water-Quality Monitoring System through Ultraviolet Sensing Using Off-the-Shelf Cameras

Contaminants can leach into drinking water in transport from water-treatment facilities or treated water storage to consumer taps. In this work, we design a low-cost mobile system that can use off-the-shelf web-cameras as an ultraviolet (UV) spectrometer. We posit to analyze and categorize impurities present in water by using fundamental image processing and computer vision techniques. In this poster paper, we qualitatively and quantitatively analyze the ultraviolet absorption and scattering through images captured of an UV light source (at 385nm wavelength) transmitted through de-ionized water containing varying contaminants and at different concentrations. We particularly explore the tests for lead, arsenic, table salt, charcoal, and coconut oil, and run a pilot-study on ground-truth analysis of tap water from five counties around Atlanta, Georgia, USA.