A HEREFORD student is part of a trio of teenagers who has created a quacking new way to detect pollution in the world’s open waters.

Benedict Allen, 17, is waiting for AS level results from Hereford Sixth Form College and teamed up Ben Hope and Harri Bell-Thomas, both 18 and A level pupils at Monmouth.

Over four days, Ben, Harri and Benedict brought Watt the Duck to life at Monmouth School in preparation for a national coding competition.

Under their team name, Buoy, the pupils put together a combination of Raspberry Pi computers (a tiny and affordable computer used to learn programming), sensors and a duck to revolutionise how data from oceans, rivers and lakes is collected.

More than 1,200 children from 66 centres across the UK went to Birmingham’s ICC for Young Rewired State’s Festival of Code and judges crowned the trio winners of the Code a Better Country category.

Benedict said: “Hopefully, the next step is to secure some funding and build a more robust prototype.

“We had lots of interest on Twitter – lots of people approached us.

“I’m looking forward to the research aspect of it.”

They have already had interest from a venture capitalist, exploring supporting the invention’s development.

The team’s small, autonomous, Raspberry Pi-powered duck boat records and posts data about its environment, including temperature, humidity and UV readings, with live PiCam feed from the boat, to a web and mobile app client.

It represents these readings in charts, graphs and maps.

Ben said: “Huge companies like BP could use a massive version of the duck on oceans, and private owners can have small ones for their lakes.

“The duck came around because we needed somewhere waterproof and buoyant to house all of the important stuff.

“We were inspired by the 29,000 rubber ducks which spilled out from a cargo ship 20 years ago and have floated around the world’s seas since.”