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Water Level Gauge for the "Sump" Below my Observatory

Gina

By Gina
in DIY Observatories

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saac

saac

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Gina with your tech know how I reckon if there had been an opening on the Manhattan project you would have been head hunted. Good to hear you're sticking to the clock though, a more worthy call on your skills.  The universal ACME Cloud Evaporator will have to wait till next year.:happy7:

As an aside, I don't know if it is true, but I understood that ACME stands for "The American Company That Makes Everything".  I always fancied one of those instant holes used by Wile E Coyote to foil the Road Runner - Beep Beep.

 

Jim

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Gina

Gina

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Just been out to the observatory and looked at the sensor unit connection to the line and all looks fine.  The hole is virtually dry but the laptop is showing about 350mm rather than nearly 370mm I was getting before.  I wonder if it's temperature sensitive - it's colder this morning.  But that's not the problem with the indoor reading over the line - I'll get the DMM out and measure the voltage to see if it's a break in the line or something wrong with the receiver unit.

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buzz

buzz

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The car industry uses a float and a resistive sensor. If you can get a spare tank fuel gauge sender, you can just turn the resistance into voltage and sense with the Arduino?

Alternatively, take a pair of welly boots and drill a small hole about 1" up the side wall. When your feet get wet....

 

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Gina

Gina

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Checked the incoming voltage on the CAT5 cable and it's alright (over 4v) so the problem with the display is with the receiver unit.  I'll upload the sketch again and see if that fixes it.

A bit later..  Yep, that's fixed it :)  Working again.

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Gina

Gina

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Still working and so far still keeping the heavy rain away but according to the weather forecast it should be tested tomorrow as the whole area has a Yellow MET Office warning for heavy rain.  The forecast for at least gale force winds to go with it.  Moderate rain and high winds have already started.  There's a howling in the chimney :(  I have brought the laptop back indoors and just relying on the water level gauge.

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Gina

Gina

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Sump is filling quite rapidly and the little pump can be seen to be turning on and off by the water level gauge.  Filling rate is significant but well below the pumping rate.  Taking around 90s to rise and 30s or so to lower.  I was going to send the "pump on" signal indoors but forgot about it :(  I'll do that next time it's fine in the daytime and the swamp between house and observatory has drained a bit.

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Gina

Gina

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The water level gauge is now telling me that the sump is filling more rapidly than the little pump can deal with.  The water level is above the little pump turn on level and slowly rising.  I think the large bilge pump should turn on in the next few minutes unless the rain decreases.  The water level was steady for a while while the little pump was just pumping water at the same rate as it was coming in.

A bit later... Rain has decreased from torrential to heavy and the gauge has steadied - the little pump is matching the incoming rate.

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Gina

Gina

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Raining heavily again now and the little pump has just removed a few litres of water from the sump.  I'm wondering whether to set up a logging system for the water level just for interest.  It would be nice but whether it's worth the effort I'm not sure.  One possibility would be to add it to my weather station logger - if that still works :D  Not touched it for ages but it is something I want to get back to in time.  I guess most purely astro projects are not worth touching until it dries up a bit :(  Weather seems to be of more interest currently :D

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Gina

Gina

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The very heavy rain forecast for today hasn't yet arrived.  In fact the sun has come out :D  It has been very windy though so it looks like I now need to get my weather station working again, particularly the wind instruments to deter these horrible winds :D  I'm working on it ...

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