DIY Photometer
Elliott Claus
Abstract
Many professional biologists are doing ocean acidification research, but this requires expensive machinery to monitor pH levels accurately. This project’s goal is to make an accessible and accurate DIY photometer to measure ocean pH, with the goal of it being used in high school classrooms. This photometer is upgraded from a design by Yang et al. in their paper, “Seawater PH Measurements in the Field: A DIY Photometer with 0.01 Unit PH Accuracy.” The main improvements involve simplifying the building process using a custom printed circuit board (PCB), having clear building instructions and usage procedures, adding a third LED to make the measurements more accurate, and updating code to calculate the pH on the device. After testing, this DIY photometer design successfully meets the +/- 0.01 pH precision, while being simple and cost effective to build. The total cost is around $80.
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