# A Smart Sensing System of Water Quality and Intake Monitoring for Livestock and Wild Animals
## 5 Discussion  
This work presented a sensor-based data collection and analysis system to track water intake for both domestic cattle and wild animals. The system records the water consumption of individual animals using the water level sensor. It also records the duration of each drinking event. The animal identification is detected using motion detectors, cameras, and RFID systems. Water temperature and turbidity are also measured and recorded. The system also measures the total water consumption and sends an alert signal if more water should be pumped from the external water source. The overall sensing system is controlled by multiple microcontroller units with communications through ethernet cables. All data are stored digitally and automatically using the SD card interface. The system is deployed in reliable weatherproof circuit boxes. The key advantage of the system is that it provides an important tool to track individual animal water consumption. These data could be used to evaluate each animal's health and for herd management. If any individual animal demonstrates an abnormal drinking pattern, early detection and intervention could be triggered to save cost. Water temperature and quality recording also help to avoid water-related animal health issues. Moreover, the water intake measurement helps water saving as better knowledge of the decomposition of water consumption could be obtained. Furthermore, the system provides unique access to study wild animal drinking events in remote grazing sites. The automatic sensing and data recording system helps data analysis and overall animal monitoring. Table 2 summarizes the system features and compares them with other recent similar systems. The primary difference between our proposed system and other similar systems is that it can be deployed in remote sites without confinement. The proposed system also provides images of the drinking events, which is uniquely helpful for recording potential wild animals. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline
**Date** & **Time** & **Temperature (\({}^{\circ}\)C)** & **Water Depth Difference (cm)** & **Water Consumed (L)** \\ \hline
6-Aug & 8–18a & 23.4 & 0.2 & 1.45 \\
6-Aug & 8–18a & 23.4 & 0.4 & 3.29 \\
6-Aug & 8–22a & 23.5 & 0.2 & 1.25 \\
6-Aug & 8–23a & 23.6 & 0.3 & 2.00 \\
6-Aug & 8–40a & 23.9 & 0.7 & 5.41 \\
6-Aug & 8–44a & 24.0 & 0.1 & 1.06 \\
6-Aug & 8–57a & 24.1 & 0.6 & 4.92 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Data recorded in the SD card. Figure 18: Recorded water temperature data with different day and time. The measurement error of the system comes from the individual sensors. For example, the temperature sensor has a resolution of 0.1 degree and the water depth sensor has a resolution of 0.1 cm. Such error is good enough for our application. As usually the drinking events do not last very long, disturbances such as water evaporation or raining are not considered in the current system, but may be included in the future studies. The water intake measurement has error due to the unstable of the water surface. There are many different readings during the drinking event. We are taking the medium value to balance the accuracy and data storage. The next system will combine the water level reading with the scale reading that measures the weight of the water tank to improve the reading accuracy. The current system has a few shortcomings that would be addressed in future improvements. For example, the animal detection system is sometimes not reliable. The motion detector may be triggered by other motions besides cows and wild animals as some pictures triggered by the motion detector are showing no animals at the drinking station. The RFID system is also not 100% reliable. It may miss some animal visits. The water sensors lack the capability to detect the mineral levels of water. Moreover, currently, the system data collection and transmission are done manually by people fetching the SD card, which is difficult as usually people travel to the remote site once every two weeks.