Vintage Ammeter Becomes Plant Moisture Gauge

It’s not uncommon to happen across vintage measurement equipment at the local flea market or garage sale. Often with an irresistible aesthetic, and built to last decades, these tools nonetheless tend to be sidelined when modern multimeters are available. [Build Comics] had just such a piece on hand, and decided to repurpose it with some modern hardware instead.

The build begins with a Hartmann & Braun 60 amp ammeter. Replete in a nice wooden box, it’s the perfect candidate for a modern refit. The device uses an indicator of the moving iron type. Intending to turn the device into a soil moisture monitor, [Build Comics] began by removing the original heavy-wound coil. In its place, a custom coil was installed instead, wound on a 3D printed bobbin using a modified sewing machine. This allows the meter to be easily driven by an Arduino with little more than a transistor on a GPIO pin. To detect moisture, a Iduino ME110 moisture probe was used. Complete with cloth-covered wire to maintain the vintage look. The original meter plate was also photographed, modified, and reprinted, to read moisture levels instead of current.

If you’re interested in these gauge restoration techniques but don’t have a green thumb, no worries. [Build Comics] used similar tricks to put together a gorgeous weather station that would look great on your desk.

Continue reading “Vintage Ammeter Becomes Plant Moisture Gauge”

Pressure Gauge Used to Monitor Internet Usage

Steam Gauge Keeps Track Of Your Internet Usage

There’s a certain appeal to analog gauges in a vastly digital world. [Ed Konowal] is a Network Operations Supervisor for a school district in Florida — part of his job is to ensure a stable and fast internet connection, so he decided to make an internet usage gauge for his office.

What we really like about this hack is the fact that [Ed] had no idea how to do it. It’s a simple enough idea, right? Google was his friend and Ed started learning about all kinds of things. Raspberry Pi’s and Arduinos, wireless receiver/transmitters, servos and steppers, Python…

After quite a bit of trial and error, [Ed] eventually settled on a wired design which uses a Raspberry Pi running a Python program to poll the internet bandwidth, which in turn calculates the servo position for the dial and sends that number to the Arduino to move it into position. This repeats every 10 seconds. Pretty cool!

Kind of reminds us of this project to make custom gauges using a stepper motor breakout board!

[Thank Justin!]