Vision

Équipe Francobotique, FLL#44642

We are a FIRST LEGO LEAGUE robotics team of 8 team members in Grades 5 to 7. For our project, we decided to look at Canada’s watersheds. We found out that Canada has more lake area than any other country in the world. In fact, Canada is home to 1/5th of the world’s freshwater! After coming across the WWF-Canada website and reading that the greatest threat to Canada’s freshwater systems is the lack of water quality data, we decided to tackle this problem as a team. We have a responsability to monitor our freshwater ecosystems for the wildlife and people that rely on them.

To help make water quality data collection easier, more widespread and more reliable, we decided to use the technology available today to create a low-cost, autonomous, multi-parameter water quality measurement system deployable in most freshwater bodies around the world. Our goal is to provide the data needed to make smart decisions to protect our watersheds here in Canada and wolrdwide for generations to come.

Action

We started our project in September and have worked on it for the last 9 months. We began by conducting extensive background research on the problem. We consulted 76 print sources and wrote our own national waterfront resident survey, in French and English, to verify our chosen problem. We obtained survey answers from residents in all 10 Canadian provinces! We then asked freshwater experts what they wanted and needed. We used their feedback, along with our research, to choose which parameters to include in our solution. We studied 45 existing solutions to better understand what is currently available and to obtain ideas for our solution design. We discovered that most of the existing solutions are VERY expensive ($40k- 60k) and most require researchers to go out in the field to obtain the measurements, which meant that water quality data was being collected infrequently and not on all lakes.

Introducing the Sentry226! Our solution is a new data collection device cheap enough that it can be deployed in several locations per lake, with no need for human interaction. Our solution is composed of a multi-parameter sonde and buoy, and costs $1500 to build. It serves as an early warning system, collecting data at regular intervals using its sonde and then storing this data in its buoy. When convenient, the collected data is wirelessly transfered to a nearby cell phone in a format ready for direct uploading to DataStream’s national open-source database. The Sentry226 measures depth, water temperature, conductivity, pH and dissolved oxygen down and up the water column, averaging the values for increased reliability.

To date, we have built a 1:10 scale model of our Sentry226 sonde and buoy system to verify our material decisions, and have built and tested a full-size prototype of our multi-parameter sonde. We tested our sonde prototype in a pool, in a lake down to 15 m (50 feet) and compared its data to a Water Rangers Testing Kit and a YSI professional sonde. Our sonde is waterproof down to 15 m (50 feet), can successfully transfer its data by Bluetooth to a nearby cell phone, and provides data that is comparable to the data obtained from a professional sonde. The LSF Action Project Funding helped cover the costs of the construction of our sonde prototype.

We have also designed our buoy, wrote a business plan, prepared marketing materials, created a TV commercial and summarized our sonde testing results in a testing report. GREAT NEWS! We have found an industry partner! FOCA, the Federation of Ontario Cottagers Association, has agreed to fund and oversee the construction of our buoy and help our team deploy the first-ever Sentry226 on a lake this summer! They will take on our project and make it their research focus for the next two years!

Reflection & Celebration

We have consulted 20 different experts from coast-to-coast in Canada during our project. It is incredible to hear that our project is really making an impact in the freshwater research community. Here are some of their testimonials:

“Everyone at FOCA is very impressed and awestruck by your project. You have impressed water quality experts that have been working in this field for 40 to 50 years! That’s a true sign that you have something really special.” – Gavin Vance, FOCA

“You are working on exactly what we need at exactly the right time. Well done!” – Camille LeBlanc, Living Lakes Canada

“You are absolutely on the right track!! Your idea to make your solution a low-cost early warning device is GENIUS!” – Nikki Kroetsch, Fisheries and Oceans Canada

“Your project is so awesome, I just had to share it at the first ever meeting of the Canadian Freshwater Agency. We were all talking about it!” – Elizabeth Hendriks, WWF-Canada

“I’m looking forward to using this probe to assess our watershed. It will certainly reduce my workload and give us more data. Well done!”
– Akib Hasan, OBVT

“You are famous in the water quality research world. All the freshies in Canada are talking about your team and your Sentry226. We all know about your project – and can’t wait to see it in action.” – Gavin Vance, FOCA

BREAKING NEWS!! Our project will be featured in the Ontario Lake Stewards 2025 Magazine, shared with over 25,000 people!

We are so thankful for the LSF grant, which allowed our team to build a full-size prototype of our Sentry226 sonde and test it in the field. With FOCA as our industry partner, we are going to see our idea become a reality. Our Sentry226 is already making big waves in the watershed research world. We can’t wait to see it in action this summer!

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