Creating a System to Remotely Monitor the Impedance Change of Cement

As the number of concrete structures continues to grow, the need for smart and effective sensing and monitoring technology comes with it. This goal of this project is to create a system that can sense changes in the integrity of concrete and can be monitored remotely. To accomplish this, an AD5933 chip was used with a microcontroller to measure the impedance between two probes. The AD5933 chip must be calibrated every time measurements are taken, so a MUX chip was used to accomplish this process automatically. The device was powered using a solar panel and a lithium-ion battery to allow it to be used remotely. A Raspberry Pi was used to host an SQL database that the microcontroller sent data to, which was then displayed using an html webpage. Currently, the device successfully sends data to the database and can be monitored remotely, but the project is ongoing and there are a number of improvements to be made. The impedance measurement system currently has a bug which causes incorrect values to be made, the solar panel cannot supply enough power to the device while it is taking rapid measurements, and the MUX chip used to calibrate the system may have some leakage current causing the impedance measurements to be inaccurate.