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. 

LanternBot is a robot that was designed to collect data on the water quality and share it with the people living around the area. 

LanternBot's design is very similar to that of the water lanterns seen in East Asian countries. Instead of a square base, our robot has a hexagonal base and a hexagonal prism above it, which house the electronic components. There are two parts to the robot: the frame of the robot and the electronics compartment module. The main frame consists of the base and the hexagonal prism, while the electronics compartment module consists of a smaller hexagonal prism with electronics mounted on it, which is placed inside of the larger hexagonal prism of the main frame. The sensors will be sticking out through the hole at the bottom plate of the robot. 

We created LanternBot in order to collect and provide data on the water quality of the LSU lakes, which are known for the bad water quality, to the company called the GEC, who specializes in coastal planning, engineering, and restoration. The data collected through this robot could help them with their LSU lake restoration project. Although our main focus is on the data collection, our robot can also raise awareness of the water quality to the people around the area. This robot is equipped with an LED strip that could emit different colors of light (red, orange, and green), based on the data collected. This would allow us to visualize the water quality of the lakes. We are hoping to raise the awareness of the water quality to the people in the area. 

The LanternBot consists of two simple components: electronics and the body. We are using acrylic panels for the body, which were cut using a laser cutter. The electronics are also very simple as well. We are using a sensor, an LED strip, a battery, and an Arduino. The data collected through the sensor is transferred to Arduino, which then uses that data to determine which color of light to emit on an LED strip. If the water quality is good, it would emit the green light, and if it's bad, it would emit the red light. The innovative part of our project is the use of CAD software and 3D printed parts. In order to assemble our robot, we designed and 3D printed two different joints, which were used to join the panels together. Since our robot is mostly automated, there is a need for a user to interact with the robot. However, users will have many sensor options to choose from. After they chose which sensor they want to use, all they need to do is to place the LanternBot on the water, and see which color the robot will emit.