Tools for East African Lakes (TEAL)

The TEAL project is designed to improve environmental monitoring in the African Great Lakes. We are building field spectrometers for measuring the optical properties of lakes. Deployment of autonomous field sensor networks at scale, combined with the satellite remote sensing measurements they support, will aid the better management of lakes in East Africa. A custom circuit board has been designed to support the dual spectrometer device and all of the devices have been integrated. The spectrometers were purchased without fiber connectors, so connectors were machined and glued to the spectrometer entrance. One challenge has been the software and calibration of the spectrometers. However, the software is now allowing setting of the integration time and and a calibration procedure has been designed for at a relatively low cost and a reliance on transfer calibration.

Figure 1: The spectrometers integrated on the custom circuit board. The fiber connector is glued to the spectrometer entrance with waterproof epoxy.

Figure 2: Example uncalibrated spectrum with a vegetation signature. Collected with a 10 microsecond integration time.