This article presents the design of a new distributed and multi-platform sy
stem for water quality monitoring, enhanced with powerful Internet capabili
ties. The measured variables are temperature, turbidity, pH, dissolved oxyg
en, and electrical conductivity. The signal-conditioning block has been sim
plified through the use of software routines for thermal compensation, henc
e, reducing the cost and dimensions. The system offers a wide variety of In
ternet capabilities, like e-mail alarm notifications, automatic storage of
measured data in a remote machine via the FTP protocol, dynamic generation
of HTML reports, real time graphs, and indicators visible from a remote web
browser, etc. The whole system supports several types of computers, operat
ing systems and communications hardware. Human presence near the geographic
location of water is dramatically reduced, since the system automates the
principal tasks of the classical water monitoring process. (C) 2001 Publish
ed by Elsevier Science B.V.