Need Help Measuring water volume

12 Jul 2016

I am a relative newcomer to arduino, but I need to make a display in the house which will tell me how much water is stored in my water tanks (max 15,000 litres) 30 meters from the house, I think the best method would be to use differential pressure and transmit the reading by wi-fi to an LCD screen in the house. Has anyone done this before? Can anyone help?

Top Comments

Matt over 9 years ago +1

Hmm, could you mount an ultrasonic distance sensor under the lid of the container (assuming the water doesn't reach the top ).. then use that to measure how far away the water is?

hudoj over 9 years ago in reply to Matt

Yes I could mount an ultrasonic distance sensor in the top of the tank but the tank is over 2 metres deep and I have not been able to find a sensor which is accurate at that distance.
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mcb1 over 9 years ago in reply to Matt

Electronichamsters (Eric Tsai) did some excellent work using RFM69 radio units in "Forget Me Not".
Index - Eric Tsai

You could easily use the reading from the ultrasonic sensor Matt suggested, and feed it back to the house.

Around here the simple method is a float attached to an stainless rod with an orange ball, when its well above the tank it's full.
One thing to be careful of is any connection doesn't allow the tank to drain if there is a fitting failure.

Mark
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Matt over 9 years ago

Hmm, could you mount an ultrasonic distance sensor under the lid of the container (assuming the water doesn't reach the top ).. then use that to measure how far away the water is?
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dougw over 9 years ago

Pressure is a good method.
Capacitance can be less costly.
There is lots of info about measuring water depth using capacitance on the net.
Here is a demo I did this year:
Keysight Technologies U1282A Digital Multimeter - Applications - Water Level Sensing
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clem57 over 9 years ago

Read Determining water tank volume using hydrostatic pressure - SensorsONE . Understanding that, you could use wifi if the distance is close to the house. Otherwise another method would be needed. Check https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10221 also.
C
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