Abstract
Access to safe drinking water remains limited in rural and mining-affected regions, where groundwater and surface water may carry suspended solids, elevated dissolved minerals, pH excursions and microbial contamination, and where continuous quality monitoring is rarely available. This work presents the design and prototype implementation of a portable, solar-powered water quality monitoring and purification system that classifies incoming water into four pollution classes using total dissolved solids (TDS), pH and turbidity, and then routes the water through a treatment train or isolates it accordingly. Sensor signals are digitised by a 16-bit I2C analogue-to-digital converter (ADS1115) and evaluated by a microcontroller using threshold rules aligned with Indian drinking-water guidance (BIS IS 10500:2012). The final class is the most severe of the three parameter classes. A multi-stage treatment line (sediment, activated carbon, 80 GPD reverse osmosis, ultrafiltration and mineral cartridges), relay-controlled pumps and solenoid valves, a local display, an audible and visual alarm, and GSM-based SMS alerts are integrated on a photovoltaic supply with MPPT charge control and battery storage. A working prototype has been assembled, and an ESP32-to-RP2040/FPGA (Vicharak Shrike-lite) migration path for hardware-level fail-safe logic is described. Published Jharkhand water-quality datasets are mapped onto the classification scheme to illustrate the expected distribution of classes. The design emphasises low cost, off-grid operation and ease of deployment where infrastructure is limited.