If you’ve ever wanted to learn how our chemistry test kits really work, from the inside out, you could consider building your own Nitrate test kit thanks to a new open source project by Joshua Pearce. The guidelines for this open source Nitrate testing kit uses not commercially available Nitrate reagents and a simple enclosure, led, sensor and bluetooth chip to build a NO3 photometer for just $65.
We’re not suggesting that all reefers rush out and build one of these nitrate photometers themselves just to save a few bucks on accurate nitrate measurements. But for the DIY inclined this could be a really neat project that will help the reefer really grasp how chemistry is used to determine the concentration of different molecules in our water.
This sounds like a perfect project for a club to spearhead, since the whole process of building, calibrating and using the nitrate photometer will also educate users as to how test kits work, and how to use them to get the most accurate and repeatable measurements possible. Being open source means that this kit could be fine tuned for seawater, for a certain range, or very very fine range resolution depending on your application. [Hackaday]
