I have been able to monitor the power usage of the home with the Power Node. One project I have been meaning to tackle is to monitor the water usage as well. The photo below shows my main water meter. I also have a `sub-meter`, which measures the water usage in the garden. I do not pay for sewer charges for water used by this latter me
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ter, saving me a lot of money during the growing season. The unit is a " disk meter " which is a positive displacement type. The meter consists of two parts: the collection unit, and the counter unit. Water flows through the sealed collection unit and turns a magnet to transfer the water usage information to the counter unit which sits on top and has the dials. The spinning magnetic field allows the collection unit to be completely sealed for long life. The counter unit also has a remote display mounted outside the home for easy reading by the utility company. The meter sends one pulse down to the remote unit for every 100 gallons of water used. My first idea for a sensor explored the pulse that the counter unit sends to the remote display unit. Unfortunately, one pulse is sent for every 100 Gallons, and this is much too low a resolution for my use. My second idea was to pick up the small white arrow on the water indicator dial (marked "10 Gallons" on the front dial) using an optical reflective sensor. Since this indicator makes one revolution per 10 Gallons, I decided to use four phototransistors arranged in a circle to increase the resolution to 2. 5 Gallons. I built the LED and phototransistor circuit and mounted it onto a small piece of perforated printed circuit board and a solderless breadboard. In actual tests I found that it was very difficult to pick up the small white arrow. I was concerned with the difficulty in...
This project fits more for custom made battery casing that can have more space to hide things inside. This switch with few alterations can be used for any other project as well but is designed based on e-bike needs! This project use a clever functionality of....
The circuit described here uses ultrasonic oscillations and operates based on the propagation velocity of these oscillations in the air. Thus, we can easily determine the distance of two points if the time within which the wave travels this distance is....
Sometimes the precious metals are hidden too deep and are not detected except with complicated devices. In many cases, however, small pieces of precious metal buried near the surface can be detected by relatively simple means. Everyone is very attractive to....
Many times for various reasons we forget or can not water the plants that we have in our homes. And many humidity sensors units just notify us with a beeping sound or with a flashing light, that the pot needs watering. But what if we are away from home? This....
The principle behind a metal detector is really very simple. Proof of this is the circuit that follows, in which it proves that the construction of a metal detector can be done in the minute, with few components that we find very easily everywhere. With the....
The sub-harmonic bass generator is a sound producing unit for guitars. The sound it produces looks very much like that of the bass guitar. The octave generator is sometimes quite unusual since it does not produce any of the usual ways of coloring the sound,....
In the past the sounding (sea bottom measurement) was done with the "bullet", that is, with a heavy lead object that the seamen plucked into the sea hung from a calibrated rope. As soon as the "bullet" reached the bottom, the depth appeared directly from the....
This Amplifier was designed to have the following specifications: Distortion less than 0.1% at full power of 100W even at 20KHz. Power has to be attributed to an extended bandwidth. The output transistors must be protected against short circuits. The power....
A series of LEDs serve to alert the gardener when plants need water. Using two conventional digital integrated LEDs and a series of LEDs, we make a very useful device for gardening. The device detects the amount of water in the pot and alerts the grower.....
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