I volunteer at a community orchard where we have recently installed an Ecosure1450 Litre Water Tank. We currently harvest rainwater from the roof of the doctors’ surgery / pharmacy building next door. The initial setup made only minor changes to the existing guttering. We are uncertain how much rainwater is being diverted and how much is going to the other down pipes.
The site is in Cambridge, UK which appears to have good TTN coverage. A modestly priced solution to measure the depth of water in the butt would be really handy!
The butt is roughly 1360mm high, 1250mm diameter. It has a dome top and the position of the access hatch might make fitting a device at the ideal point at the apex difficult.
Any advice or experience with solutions would be gratefully received!
Happy to consider other suppliers or technologies (radar, laser, …) if they offer a better solution.
My background is in software engineering and this would be my first experience with LoRaWAN®. I am keen to avoid spending money on a something that doesn’t work!
The hinge of the access cover is at the apex (see attached). Depending on the size of the sensor (or integral device) there would be a risk that it would be hit by the access cover when opened. Might be possible to add a buffer around it for protection. As it would be off centre some packing would be required to ensure it was vertical. Suitable job for a 3D printer?
Thanks for the reply. Good to hear from someone with practical experience. Unfortunately, it might be tricky mounting the US-head under the centre of this large tank now that it is in place!
The valid level range of 20mm - 2000mm is fine. Illustrated cable might be too short but it might be possible to extend it.
Thanks for the suggestion. Looks interesting. Water butt is around 1350mm high with 150mm of air above the surface when full. Good fit for the ranging range of 0.15–40m.
Looks like it would need an enclosure and waterproof gland to keep the circuit board dry?
The wiki has the drawings but like most of the stuff we deal with, it’s not all gift wrapped.
Assuming you have it mounted on some flat surface then you could use a variety of gaskets to prevent water ingress, assuming that there is any possibility of water rising to that level or any splashes reaching it.
If getting the sensor wet or experiencing an overflow situation, then you should use an old fashioned float switch in parallel to trigger both the LoRaWAN device and to sound a local alarm & visual beacon. LW is not suitable for command & control due to the nature of shared RF spectrum, it is fine for sensing, you should not rely on it to tell you something bad is happening.
I used a jsn-sr04t-waterproof-ultrasonic-sensor to measure river level transmitting results (water level, temperature, etc) over LoRaWAN to The Thing V3 server
I used a jsn-sr04t-waterproof-ultrasonic-sensor to measure river level transmitting results (water level, temperature, etc) over LoRaWAN to The Thing V3 server
Thanks. This water butt needs a sensor that can measure in the range 150mm to 1350mm. The JSN-SR04T Ultrasonic Sensor minimum range is 250mm.
Mathematically, maybe, but if the last reading was 280mm and now it’s reporting a funny number, its full. If its reporting 350mm it’s going down. Same for the other end.
Precision can be a huge PitA if you work too hard at it.
That’s some great insight, everyone — thanks for sharing your setups!
Regarding the water sensor, I’ve found that combining an ultrasonic module (like the JSN-SR04T) with a simple analog float or pressure-based fallback gives the best balance between precision and reliability. The ultrasonic handles regular level tracking, while the float or pressure switch protects against edge cases like overflow or condensation errors.
If you’re aiming for the 150–1350 mm range, you could also look at time-of-flight (ToF) sensors with better short-range accuracy, though they usually need a weatherproof housing and stable power. Curious to hear if anyone has tried integrating one of those with The Things Stack yet.
using a Heltec LoRa V3 did some experiments using two Pololu ST Time-of-Flight (ToF) Distance Sensors (VL53L1X vl53l0x VL6180X) measuring the difference in liquid level between compartments in a small dual tank transmitting results using LoRa P2p and LoRaWAN (not at the same time)
typical distance 10 to 20cm results accurate to a mm
Have you considered the possibility of using a pressure sensor (Bosch BMP280, which is very inexpensive and equipped with a thermometer)?
If you multiply the pressure difference by the density of water, you get the height of the water column. The sensor shouldn’t be directly submerged in water, but rather placed near the lid and connected to a small tube that must be immersed to the bottom of the tank (many washing machines use this method with a membrane pressure switch to detect the presence of water in the drum).
Appreciate the flag, @stevencellist, but it’s an idea, not a great idea, but an idea, so the account is somewhat disabled to slow down any more LLM BS - not that they have backlinked to anything but they may do so at another date. Way to go with the username.
There are other pre-built sensors that would do this, but if you can form an airtight seal and can be bothered to calibrate it, it is an option.
