Learning About The Flume Water Monitor

December 18, 2024 by Lewin Day 10 Comments

The itch to investigate lurks within all us hackers. Sometimes, you just have to pull something apart to learn how it works. [Stephen Crosby] found himself doing just that when he got his hands on a Flume water monitor.

[Stephen] came by the monitor thanks to a city rebate, which lowered the cost of the Flume device. It consists of two main components: a sensor which is strapped to the water meter, and a separate “bridge” device that receives information from the sensor and delivers it to Flume servers via WiFi. There’s a useful API for customers, and it’s even able to integrate with a Home Assistant plugin. [Stephen] hoped to learn more about the device so he could scrape raw data himself, without having to rely on Flume’s servers.

Through his reverse engineering efforts, [Stephen] was able to glean how the system worked. He guides us through the basic components of the battery-powered magnetometer sensor, which senses the motion of metering components in the water meter. He also explains how it communicates with a packet radio module to the main “bridge” device, and elucidates how he came to decompile the bridge’s software.

When he sent this one in, [Stephen] mentioned the considerable effort that went into reverse engineering the system was “a very poor use” of his time — but we’d beg to differ. In our book, taking on a new project is always worthwhile if you learned something along the way. Meanwhile, if you’ve been pulling apart some weird esoteric commercial device, don’t hesitate to let us know what you found!

A two picture montage with the left montage showing a pair of hands holding an assembled and closed turbidity sensor and the right picture showing A pair of hands holding the screw on cap for the turbidity sensor and a prototype board against a backdrop of green leave

Rapid Prototyping To Measure Turbidity In Rapids

November 15, 2022 by Abe Connelly 6 Comments

[RiverTechJess] is in the process of getting a PhD in environmental engineering and has devoted a chapter to creating a turbidity sensor for river network monitoring. Environmental sensing benefits from being able to measure accurately and frequently, so providing low cost devices helps get more data and excuse the occasional device loss that’s bound to happen when deploying electronics out in the wild. Towards this end, [RiverTechJess] has created a low cost turbidity sensor that rivals the more expensive alternatives in cost and accuracy.

The turbidity sensor is designed to be at least partially submerged allowing for the LED and light sensors to be be able to take measurements. [RiverTechJess] has made a 3D printed prototype to test the design, allowing for rapid experimentation and deployment of the sensors to work out issues. The 3D printed enclosure prototype uses rubber o-rings and “vacuum grease” to provide a watertight seal. An ESP32 microcontroller is used to store logged data on an SD card and drive the TSHG6200 850nm infrared LED and the two TSL237S-LF sensors.

The resulting paper on the turbidity sensor, in addition to the blogs of the process, provide a wealth of data that show what goes into developing and calibrating a device that is meant to be used for environmental monitoring. All source code is available on GitHub and development continues on a newer revision of the turbidity sensor with updated electronics and hardware.

We’re no strangers to water sensors and we’ve seen devices from internet connected water pollution monitors to small handheld potable water detectors.

Video after the break!

Continue reading “Rapid Prototyping To Measure Turbidity In Rapids” →

Protect Your Coffee Machine With A Filter Monitor

June 9, 2019 by Jenny List 16 Comments

Coffee machines are delicate instruments, likely to be damaged by limescale. Thus they will often have a filter present, but filters have a limited capacity of water upon which they can be effective. At Make Bournemouth, they have approached the problem of when to change filters on their coffee machine by applying a bit of high-tech.

The water passing through the filter is monitored by a couple of DFRobot TDS modules, a flow meter, and a DS18B20 temperature sensor. The data from these is fed into an ESP32 dev board, which makes it available by a web interface for handy accessibility through a smartphone. It can then be used to work out how much of the filter’s capacity has been used, and indicate when a replacement is needed. All the code is available in a GitHub repository, and with luck now Bournemouth’s hackerspace will never see the coffee machine succumb to limescale.

Of course, this isn’t the first coffee maker water hack we’ve brought you. A year or two ago we told you about somebody making their pod coffee maker auto-fill too.

Wireless Water Level Sensor From PVC Pipe

February 13, 2015 by Rick Osgood 25 Comments

[Bob] was having trouble keeping up with his water troughs. He had to constantly check them to make sure they weren’t empty, and he always found that the water level was lower than he thought. He decided it was time to build his own solution to this problem. What he ended up with was a water level sensor made from PVC pipe and a few other components.

The physical assembly is pretty simple. The whole structure is made from 1/2″ PVC pipe and fittings and is broken into four nearly identical sensor modules. The sensors have an electrode on either side. The electrodes are made from PVC end caps, sanded down flat at the tip. A hole is then drilled through the cap to accommodate a small machine screw. The screw threads are coated in joint compound before the screw is driven into the hole, creating its own threads. These caps are placed onto small sections of PVC pipe, which in turn connect to a four-way PVC cross connector.

On the inside of the electrode cap, two washers are placed onto the screw. A stranded wire is placed between the washers and then clamped in place with a nut. All of the modules are connected together with a few inches of pipe. [Bob] measured this out so it would fit appropriately into his trough, but the measurements can easily be altered to fit just about any size container. The wires all route up through the pipe. The PVC pipe is cemented together to keep the water out. The joint compound prevents any leaks at the electrodes.

A piece of CAT 5 cable connects the electrodes to the electronics inside of the waterproof controller box. The electronics are simple. It’s just a simple piece of perfboard with an XBee and a few transistors. The XBee can detect the water level by testing for a closed circuit between the two electrodes of any sensor module. The water acts as a sort of switch that closes the circuit. When the water gets too low, the circuit opens and [Bob] knows that the water level has lowered. The XBee is connected to a directional 2.4GHz antenna to ensure the signal reaches the laptop several acres away. Continue reading “Wireless Water Level Sensor From PVC Pipe” →

Mobile Chicken Coop Includes Wireless Sensors

January 28, 2013 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

mobile-chicken-coop-build

In and of itself this mobile chicken coop is a pretty nice build. There are some additional features lurking inside which you don’t find on most coops. [Neuromancer2701] built-in a set of sensors which can be accessed wirelessly. It makes it a snap to check up on the comfort of the hens without leaving the couch.

At the heart of the sensor system is an Arduino along with an Xbee module. The build isn’t quite finished yet, but so far three sensors have been implemented. A thermistor is used to read the temperature inside the coop. To make sure there’s enough water, two sheets of foil tape were applied to the water reservoir. The CapSense library measures the capacitance between these plates which correlates to the water lever (we’ve seen this type of water level sensor before). And finally, there’s a sensor that can tell if the door to the coop is open or shut.

He’s having trouble automating the door itself. This can be pretty tricky, especially if you go for a super complicated locking mechanism like this one.

Christmas Tree Water Sensor Gets An Upgrade And A Fancy New Box

December 7, 2011 by Mike Nathan 9 Comments

xmas-tree-water-sensor

[Eric Ayars] has a nice cast iron Christmas tree stand at home, but the only drawback is that the stand makes it hard to see just how much water is available to the tree. Last year we covered a small gadget he created to help keep tabs on the water level, but as several of you predicted, the system eventually failed.

His previous solution used copper plated proto board to sense how much water was in the stand, but the leads corroded in about a week’s time. With Christmas just around the corner, he decided to give things another try.

His revamped water level sensor relies on measuring capacitance changes in a copper strip board when under water rather than detecting a complete circuit like the previous model. To protect his sensor this time around he coated the board with polyurethane, which should provide a decent corrosion barrier.

Using the Arduino CapSense library, the sensor can detect the presence of water, signaling an alarm if the base needs refilling. One of our readers suggested that he use the tree itself as a low water indicator, which is just what [Eric] did this year. If the water is somewhat low, the Arduino-controlled relay powering the tree is switched off and then on again, every 5 seconds. If the base is nearly dry, the tree asks for water by blinking the word “Water” repeatedly in Morse code.

We think that this year’s solution is pretty clever, and we’re glad to see that [Eric] didn’t give up after last year’s setback!

Monitoring Water Levels With A Parallax Ping Sensor

August 30, 2011 by Mike Nathan 18 Comments

arduino_parallax_ping_water_level_sensor

When you need a mechanism to detect the water level within a container or tank, you have several different options. Most people opt for a simple float or probe that sits in the water, while others use optics to sense when the water is reaching an undesired level.

This device built by [Danilo Abbasciano] uses a Parallax Ping sensor instead. If the sensor is placed at the top of a well, cistern, or other water container, it can accurately calculate the height and volume of the fluid inside. This is done by using the Ping’s readings in conjunction with a few values already known to the user, namely the dimensions of the container.

In his implementation, the readings are relayed to a simple LCD panel for easy viewing, and a small piezo speaker is used to sound an alarm when the water level reaches a predefined threshold. This sort of measuring device can be quite useful in situations where a contact-based sensor would be subject to chemicals and corrosion, or where contamination is a concern.