Comments on: Arduino water level gauge

By: Howard

Howard — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 14:34:36 +0000

I came across your website while trying to find an old article on how to make a capacitive water level sensor for a pond monitor. I then came across the following article http://www.parallax.com/Portals/0/Downloads/docs/cols/nv/vol1/col/nv27.pdf that I thought would really be useful to your project. It uses a basic stamp but should be easily adaptable to the arduino. I would probably use a pvc pipe within a pipe. Put copper tape on the outside of the inner pipe which will have the water inside of it. Seal between the outer and inner pipes to keep the tape etc dry. Any capacitively trim-able oscillator would work. You could also select a frequency somewhere in the FM band put an antenna on it and tune your stereo to it. The tone will tell you what the water level is ;)

By: Nick

Nick — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 20:21:01 +0000

I’d be curious to see what effect contaminants in the water would have on the measured resistance. Wondering if it’s possible for low levels of impurities (still safe for drinking) to upset the resistance reading to the point where the level reported is significantly out.

As mentioned previously – capacitive sensing might be something to investigate for future versions :)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 05:30:08 +0000

Use lead-free solder if the water is used for consumption. Galvanize all metal contacts with non-oxidizing material like nickel or gold to prevent corrosion/rust.

By: Rob Smith

Rob Smith — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 22:04:46 +0000

Neat way of doing it, but one of my concerns would be if this is for drinking water.
As I wouldnt want to put any heavy metals into the household supply (OK I know it would be minimal)

By: Lifeboat Farm » The finished Arduino wireless water sensor

Lifeboat Farm » The finished Arduino wireless water sensor — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 10:22:47 +0000

[...] I don’t expect too many problems long term (the tank and all its fittings are plastic). The original post has photos of the array being [...]

By: Terry King

Terry King — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 07:16:26 +0000

Hi,
About electrolysis: You COULD drive each end of the resistor string from a separate Aruduino output. You could quickly alternate the polarity each time you take a reading to cancel out the DC offset and possibly counteract the electrolysis.

Or maybe you could have Two external series resistors going to two analog inputs and take two readings, one with each polarity across the resistor string, see the difference, average it out??

When you’re not taking readings, you might take both ends of the resistor string to GND.

Please keep us up to date on the longterm workability of this approach!

Regards, Terry King
On The Red Sea
terry@yourduino.com

By: Marcel

Marcel — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 00:12:18 +0000

Excellent! Well done.

I happened into your site whilst doing an image search for 200L plastic barrels. After a bit of poking about I found that you’re also into Arduino! Marvelous stuff eh!?

I see that the question of corrosion has already been raised here. If you find that to be a problem then you might want to consider using capacitive sensing. It would be inside the plastic tube and sealed from the elements. I’ve been playing with it for touch sensing through glass but I understand it would work for water level sensing.

By: Raathigeshan

Raathigeshan — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 02:27:06 +0000

Simply Superb !

By: John

John — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 20:26:51 +0000

We just used one of the analog pins to measure the resistance (and the earth pin for the return).

By: Bruno

Bruno — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 13:17:08 +0000

Hi, can you send me the conections to the arduino?
Are you using the analog input?