Water level measurements

[georgej]

I'm awaiting delivery of my first ioBridge, so lots of experimenting ahead of me!

A friend has a very remote house in the hills in Italy, relying entirely on water collected from the roof which collects into a large 30,000 litre tank.  The luxury of a long hot shower or bath depends very much on the time of year and the amount of water left in the tank!   

Apart from the fact that the house does not have a permanent internet connection (a small gotcha there!) it would seem that ioBridge would provide a simple means of recording water usage; which would be very useful.

I could get one of those expensive industrial water pressure probes (calibrating it would be a simple case of dropping it into the tank and measuring the readings as it drops down to the bottom); but I expect they are extremely expensive.  There is also the small issue of getting the readings back to the house from the tank (a distance of some 20 metres).

My question therefore, is can anyone recommend a cost-effective solution/product which will provide the analog measurement.  From there I should be able to get the rest sorted. 

My apologies if this is a "simple" question but I'm afraid I don't have a degree in electric engineering and if some has been there and done it already it would be useful to get some pointers.

Many thanks.

George

[Kralian]

I've just started pondering this exact same thing myself. Want to monitor a well that's the water supply for a house.

So far I haven't come up with anything that isn't an industrial sollution, but who knows, might stumble onto something ;-)

[Kralian]

But I think I'll try and think something up with this,

http://www.parallax.com/Store/Robots/RollingRobots/tabid/128/CategoryID/3/List/0/SortField/0/Level/a/ProductID/302/Default.aspx

Parallax Ultrasonic Sensor...

Looks like it could be a fine step in the right direction

[wolfgang]

there is a lot of different range finders available  http://www.robotshop.ca/ultrasonic-range-finders.html or you can measure inclination of a lever with swimmer. http://www.robotshop.ca/tilt-sensors-2.html
//Wolfgang

[iobridge]

This is a neat IR range finder from Adafruit - "distance finder". It outputs an analog value read by IR from 10cm to 80cm.

http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2009/05/16/new-in-the-store-ir-distance-sensor-wcable-10cm-80cm/

[hopper]

hi what about using a car fuel tank level sender modified with a longer arm

[walou12]

Hi,

how about using the 'Aquaguage' from electrosence
http://www.electrosense.com.au/#intro_ag

It has a serial data output so it should talk directly to the IO bridge

I have been running the solar version for over two years,( but not using the serial interface), trouble free.
W

[georgej]

I purchased an Aquagauge but it had to go back all the way to Australia for repair, which was a great pity.  It has just arrived back so I can take it down to Italy (from the UK) to install it.  Otherwise, I thought it was well made and had great potential.

In the meantime Maplin had something called a quantum tunnelling cable, which they no longer stock.  Basically it is cable that changes a resistance basedo n pressure.  I thought dropping a loop of that into the water tank right to the bottom would allow me to read the resistance and calibrate it.  I guess I'm going to have to look for another supplier of this "wonder" cable.

[texasclodhopper]

This pressure cable looks like it might be fun to apply. There aren't very many licensees, but perhaps this link will provide some additional sources.  http://peratech.com/licensees.php

This might be a source:  http://www.cui.com/srchresults.asp?catky=560054&subcatky=227398