The “soul” of my project is to enlighten the inhabitants around the LSU lakes about the water quality while sending live data to an onshore facility. The “body” of my project is a hexagonal polygon that floats in the LSU lakes using styrofoam. 

The WaterBeacon® helps to solve the lack of communication between the researchers and the people living around the LSU Lakes. Through the use of LEDs, it provides an easy way to communicate to the people living near LSU Lakes that the quality of water is not optimal. The WaterBeacon® helps to smooth over communication for the researchers and the nearby inhabitants of the lakes. The WaterBeacon® changes the world because it takes data automatically, which allows it to be deployed in any body of water. The freedom of putting the WaterBeacon® in any body of water will allow more communication about the water quality in the public. 

The WaterBeacon® answers the question of “How to alert the community”, but it does not answer “How it will fix the problem”. The communication aspect is just to bring the water quality issue to the attention of the people and it is their responsibility to fix the mess. This project is for the people who use the LSU lakes. The project alerts the people who are walking around or who are canoeing in the Lakes. The basic technology behind the WaterBeacon® is an LED strip that has an array of colors changes based on the data that the Arduino receives from the dissolved oxygen, pH, temperature, and conductivity sensors. The innovative aspect of the WaterBeacon® is that there was no way to take real live data and have it sent to an onshore facility. The user interacts with the project through sight, the deep red of the WaterBeacon® should worry them because that means the environment around them is not at its peak.