There isn’t exactly a catalog where one can flip open the pages and order up a mud meter with its own digital billboard.

When Roger Clapp came up with the idea, he realized the parts and pieces would have to be designed from scratch, wired together and programmed to function. Hoping for help, Clapp ventured to Western Carolina University. Clapp found a willing taker in Brian Howell, a computer and technology engineering professor. Howell volunteered to take on the project, or rather volunteered his students.

This year marks the third group of students to tackle the mud meter and its components as their senior design project, a required part of their major. The system proved so complex that students kept passing the torch to the next group as they graduated.

The mud meter consists of four sensors: the primary one that measures sediment, plus sensors for water depth, temperature and mineral concentrations. The actual sensors could be purchased, as could the billboard, but everything in between had to be designed and custom-built in house, Howell said.

The first year, students designed the hardware. They built their own circuit boards and created a data storage center that would record and store readings from the sensors every 15 minutes. They wrote programs that allowed the sensors to interface with the data center, and transmit the data to the billboard. As a perk, they designed it so Clapp could drive by with a wireless receiver and query the stored data.

They next year, students figured out how to make the components weather proof. They designed rugged housing and connectors that were durable enough to hold up to the thrashings of a torrential creek during a storm.

“During flood events everything is coming down the river at you, logs, rocks, branches. It had to be able to take a beating,” Howell said. “That was the biggest learning curve.”

The third year, students worked on the digital billboard component, and started in on a redesign. The students have already honed improvements on the design for the next round of mud meters.

Howell envisions a series of environmental sensors all over Jackson County, from mud meters to rainfall gauges, that would report to a central data logger.

“We want to observe how the entire Tuckasegee watershed behaves all the time and things going on in the watershed,” Howell said.

Howell said taking on the mud meter project was a bit daunting at first. But it has been immensely rewarding for the students to put their technology skills to work on a real-life project with tangible benefits.

“It seemed like a natural fit to do some engineering and get our students involved in service learning and also have a community outreach component,” Howell said.

— By Becky Johnson