•Remote controlled water craft for water measurement.•Modular construction of drone with Modbus communication.•Portable calibrator allowing fast and automatic calibration of several sensors.•Automatic calibration of pH, NO3- and NH4+ ion concentration electrodes.•Measurement of water quality parameters pond during autumn and winter. This paper presents a remote controlled water craft and automatic calibrator for water quality parameter measurement. To determine the water condition as temperature, conductance, pH, O2,NO3- and NH4+ ion concentration were used. All apparatus was placed on our own-design catamaran. The measurements are taken automatically on the craft, transmitted wirelessly to a PC-based control station and saved there in a dedicated database. The drone was built in such a way that it can be easily expanded using new measurement equipment and analysis software. Hence, the modularity and extensibility are important advantages of the catamaran. Using the Modbus based communication protocol enables easy measurement equipment expansion for the end-user. An important aspect in taking the measurements is the calibration of the multiple electrodes. To provide good accuracy, calibration has to be undertaken before each use. Calibration undertaken manually is very time-consuming and inconvenient; that is why the automatic calibration station was built. The proposed hardware and software were created within Project-Based Learning classes.