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Water Level Indicator with Alarm

by raikut on October 7, 2012 Table of Contents Water Level Indicator with Alarm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Intro: Water Level Indicator with Alarm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Step 1: The Working Principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Step 2: The Circuit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Step 3: Putting the circuit in a box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Step 4: The Sensor Part . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 2 3 5 9

Step 5: Installing the Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Advertisements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

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Intro: Water Level Indicator with Alarm

Introduction Today I am going to talk about a very useful project that I had taken up. It is called the Water Level Indicator. Nowadays everybody has overhead tank at their homes. But everyone who has a water tank above knows the kind of problems that they face. Firstly there is no system to track the water in the tank. Then there come a secondary problem that is when their water pump is started they have no idea when it gets filled up and sometimes there are situation where the pump keeps on pumping water to the tank and the water starts spilling out from the tank. There is wastage of energy as well as wastage of water . Later History This project that i had taken up is the result of long hours of research of work at the Internet as well as long hours of thinking. I had made various versions of the projects earlier but at last i came up with this final product. I bet this has been tested and i can now firmly say that the model would work flawlessly without any complains for years. I am saying this as i have installed this models to various houses in my neighborhood and all are working fine without any maintenance. And indeed this model is admired by all who uses it. The Situation The house where I live in has an overhead tank which is about 30 feet from the ground level. I was getting bored going up the rooftop to check whether the tank has filled or the water level was below to start the pump. I had to do this again and again. Then I sought for a solution. I always used to think of the possibilities of how can this problem be tackled in an electronic way. After years of research and by trial and error, I found one and wanted to put whatever I have done out here so that it may be helpful to someone who has a overhead water tank at their homes.

Step 1: The Working Principle

Basically the unit is made up of various sensors acting as a switch. Let me explain in a simple way. What happens is when you turn on you water pump, the water starts to get pumped from your underground reservoir or from your underground water supply from the pipes to your water tank. In the tank there is a set of sensors( to be precise there are 7 sensors), in the water tank. Just think them as a switch, as the work of the sensor will be to connect a circuit. I will explain in details in my instructables. So the water starts to get filled in the tank and when the water level in the tank starts to rise up, what happens is that the sensors that is installed in the tank starts to get activated one by one indicating the water level in the tank. And finally when it reaches to its top most sensor, there will be a visual display as well as a sound from the unit indicating that the water has filled in the tank and one can be alerted that the tank has been filled up and the water pump has to be switched off saving the electricity bill as well as over flow of water from the tank. There are Four parts in this project:(i) The Sensor Part It is generally a fixed support inside the tank having some nuts and bolt with wires coming out. (ii) The Circuit Part It comprises the brain of the module, where in all the various inputs from the sensors are fed. It is the unit from where you will get all the information of how much of water is in the tank. (iii) The Power Supply It is the part where in you will be converting the A/C voltage to a regulated voltage of 5V to the Circuit.

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(IV) The Buzzer Part It is responsible for bringing up the sound when the water level fills up in the tank. It will also be having a speaker or a buzzer to alert.

Image Notes 1. Power Regulator 7805 2. Diode IN4148 3. Diffrent coloured LED's 4. A small buzzer or you may omit this and make one yourself 5. Resistant 470 ohms, 470 Kilo Ohms, and 33 ohms 6. Power Switch SPDT or a simple switch will do 7. Transistors BC547 8. Capacitor needed in power Supply

Step 2: The Circuit

It has numerous transistors acting as a switch and the switch gets activated when the sensors tell them to. The heart of the circuit is the transistors BC 547 . There are total7 transistors in the circuit and each one will be sensing the level of water present in the overhead water tank. There is one extra power LED without a transistor and that is because this Red LED will be telling us two things. Firstly when you power the unit it will be monitoring the power present in the unit and secondly it is also the indicator telling you that there is no water at all present in the tank. As because the water level is below the No. 1 (as shown in the circuit) sensor, no LED's will be lighting up, but only for the one Red LED. Therefore when you switch on your unit if you see only one Red LED lighting up then you know that the is no water present in the tank and therefore you should make you water pump on. Then as shown in the figure i have given all the LED's in various color. Starting from the beginning is 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Red LED (Indicating no water in the tank as none of the sensors are getting contact with the water) Red LED ( Level 1, indication very low water in the tank ) Yellow LED (Level 2, indication of low water) Yellow LED (Level 3, indication of 1/4 of water in the tank) Green LED (Level 4, indication of half of water in the tank) Green LED (Level 5, indication of more than half of water) Green LED (Level 6, indication of nearing filling up the tank) Blue LED(Level 7, Full indication of tank and buzzer comes on)

Now as the water starts to rise up the sensors starts to get in contact with the water and the transistors are activated and there is a flow of current in the transistors making the LED's light up. Here in between the transistor and the LED there is a current limiting resistor 470 ohms, the job of the resistor is to checks that the LED does not get over voltage and destroy the LED. The transistor is biased by a 470K resistor with the ground and the sensing part is taken from the collector with a 33 ohms resistor going directly to the tank. As i have shown in the diagram the signals are drawn in the Green color. There by you can follow the LED's as they light up from Red to Yellow and then Green and finally to Blue making a sound. The Buzzer Part Here you can add any of the normal buzzers that are readily available in the market and if it is not then you can make yourself with a simple 555 IC. I am giving a small circuit diagram, it is really simple to make and there are minimum parts. It is a simple audio oscillator. I have also provide a circuit diagram here but if you are able to manage a buzzer then no need to assemble this circuit. The Power Supply This section contains a transformer converting the mains voltage 220V bring down to 9V. There is a bridge rectifier containing 4 diodes and making the Alternating current to Direct Current. After the filtering the voltage is then directly fed to the voltage regulator (7805) with a filtering capacitor. From the regulator IC the output voltage is then again filtered with a capacitor and is fed to the circuit. This comprises the power supply of the device. This completes the electronic part of the project and now i will be going to the sensor part, which is also made easily.

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Image Notes 1. Transistor BC 547 2. Resistant 33 ohms

Image Notes 1. Resistant 440K Ohms

Image Notes 1. The completed circuit board

Image Notes 1. Bottom Side of the circuit

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2. Cut of PCB for separation of the various circuits

Image Notes 1. Red Power LED (Soldered to the circuit directly through the cabinet 2. All the LED's are soldered to the circuit directly

Image Notes 1. The legs of the transistors seen from back side of the case

Step 3: Putting the circuit in a box

Now time to put the compiled circuit in a small box. Here i chose a Junction box that are used in electrical wiring. It was a perfect box for this project. Now the tricky part is making holes in the plastic junction box so that LED can easily slip through the holes, also the spacing between the LED's should be proportionate. First take the box and draw the outline in the face of the box. First for the switch you should make a marking at the bottom right hand side. Then mark the points for the LED's. As told earlier it should be proportionate. Now unbend a paper clip and heat it with a soldering iron and make holes to the marked points as shown in the figure. Then cut the plastic board for the power switch. After the cut is made file at the edges so that the cut is smooth and the switch can easily fit to into the cut. Fit in the Power Switch. Time for adding the LED's to the panel. Let's start by adding the Red LED from the bottom end. Then to the Yellow and Green and finally Blue. This LED's should be then be soldered to the PCB as shown in the circuit diagram. For me what i did was soldered directly to the PCB below the front panel, as it gave a solid base for the LED's. Now fix the buzzer just beside the PCB and give the connection from the circuit board. Then also fix the Power supply at the box with the help of nuts holding the transformer firmly to the box. For making a junction of the sensors you can use a cable connector, i used from a used TV circuit board as shown. This connector was actually connecting some wires with the television PCB to the CRT(Cathod Ray Tube of the TV), therefore i decided to use this as it had many pins. I then cut it from the PCB and numbered it from 1 going up till 8. You will notice that there were two pins extra, so i made this two pins connect together and made a common point for the sensor going to the tank. The rest of the pins starting from Pin 1 going up till 7 will be for the sensing part which will also be connected to the sensors of the water tank. The Nos. that i have assigned for the sensors are as follows:1: (Level 1) water is considerably low and pump needs to be started 2: (Level 2) water is low 3: (Level 3) Water level is 1 /4 4: (Level 4) Water level is Half 5: Level 5) Water level is more than half 6: (Level 6) Water level is about to fill up 7: (Level 7) Water level has filled up and alarm starts to sound 8: Common Positive Pin Therefore there are in total 8 supply line that has to be taken out from the main circuit board to the sensor. After trial and error, and a few failed experiments i found out that the best wire to be used in the project would be a Cat5 cable as it has also in total 4 pairs of wires and this can be blended in this project nicely. As it would be virtually impossible to buy lots of wire and then take it to the tank. It would be messy and there would be all short of wiring problem. And one advantage in adding a junction, while installation is that there won't be any problem for soldering the wires to the circuit while installation. It would be just plug and play. Therefore after the wire is connected to the connector. I hot glued it as it would keep the wires firmly fixed to the female connector,and there won't be any disconnection. My rented house that i live is about 3 stories high and i needed approximately 15 meters of CAT5 Cable. That end's this part of connecting the cable with the circuit and the next part will be learning to make the sensors for the water tank.

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Image Notes 1. Marks being made for the LED's to fit in

Image Notes 1. Holes being made with the help of giving heat to a hard paper clip with a soldering iron

Image Notes 1. Heat from the soldering iron transfered to the paper clip 2. Paper clip being heated and melting the plastic

Image Notes 1. File being rubbed for smooth edges

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Image Notes 1. Finished work of the Front panel for the Water Level Indicator

Image Notes 1. Red

Image Notes 1. Legs of the LED's soldered directly to the PCB 2. Front Panel 3. LED's

Image Notes 1. The Circuit facing down 2. Sensor wire for going to the water tank 3. Power Switch

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Image Notes 1. Buzzer

Image Notes 1. Transformer 2. Regulated power supply board

Image Notes 1. Circuit Board 2. Buzzer 3. Power Switch

Image Notes 1. Connector cut from a TV PCB board 2. Wires being connected to the connector 3. Male part of the connector

Image Notes

Image Notes

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1. Cut from the PCB with a Hackshaw 2. Screwed to the body of the box 3. Box of Water Level Indicator

1. Female part of the connector connected and hot glued 2. Cat5 cable used for going to the sensors of the tank 3. Male and Female connected 4. Wires from the circuit to the Male connector soldered to the junction 5. Female connector taking the signal to the water tank 6. All the wires hot glued together so that they don't come apart

Image Notes 1. CAT5 CABLE taking the feed up till the water tank

Step 4: The Sensor Part

This is the easiest part of the project to build. You only have to make two conductors so that when it is in contact with water it will act as a switch, as water is a good conductor of electricity. Lets start with finding a plastic PVC pipe or you may use any short of plastic wire casing. In my part what i did was make it with wire casing, that are utilized while wiring at houses, but if in case you don't have you can make it with a PVC pipe. Then your next step is to measure the height of the tank that is from bottom till the neck and accordingly cut the PVC wire casing. Then mark points 1 to 7 leaving some spaces as desired. For example you can measure the whole length and divide it by seven, as because you have to mark seven different points for sensing seven different water level. Example:Your tank height from bottom to top is 6 Foot (182.88 centimeter), You divide 182.88 centimeter by seven 7 then you get 182.88 / 7 = 26.12 cm Therefore you have to mark points at intervals of 26.12 cm . After marking the different water level in the PVC wire casing, find some 3 inch nut bolts as shown in figure. Drill the holes to the points marked keeping the size of the diameter of the nuts, It should snugly fit to the wire casing. Then as when the nut is fitted to the casing, don't bolt the nut as such. Make a wire loop as shown and then solder it's outside part so that it can slip to the nut easily. The length of the wire should be kept long (i.e more than 6 foot for the first sensor) and the length of the second sensor would be short then the first sensor, so this should be continued till you have 7 wires with 7 loops with varying lengths. Now put the loops of wire to the nuts that you have snuggled to the plastic wire biting and make the wires come out from every nut that you have built. After all the wires are fixed to the nut, you should now add a common line to the wire casing. For the common line you can use a naked wire running through the nut bolts bare touching each other. The gap of the naked wire and the bolt should be kept minimum and if you want you can solder a small piece of wire to the common line just beside the nut and bolt as the sensing would be more. when the water comes in contact with the common wire and the bolt, there will be transfer of current from the naked wire to the bolt and the sensing is done. After connecting all the wires to the bolt there will be a mess of wire hanging from the wire casing, what i did was hot glued all the wires in a line wise fashion so that the wires don't fall out of place. All the wires were then junctioned to a PCB board from which the sensing part would be taken out. This is shown in the figure. Therefore this completes our sensor also. Now for the final part where i will be talking about the Installation.

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Image Notes 1. Wire casing used in wiring at houses

Image Notes 1. Discard the extra end after cutting

Image Notes 1. Mark points as such at 7 such intervals

Image Notes 1. Nut and bolts

Image Notes 1. Nut placed exactly at the point marked

Image Notes 1. Wire made as a loop and soldered to firmly be at a place

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Image Notes 1. wire loop being put to the bolt

Image Notes 1. Bolt being screwed after the wire loop has been in place

Image Notes 1. Length of the wire should be till the top of the casing

Image Notes 1. Extra piece of wire just beside the 3rd sensor

Image Notes 1. Common Naked wire running down till the 1 sensor. 2. Additional naked wire added just beside the nut bolt for better sensing

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Image Notes 1. The complete sensor assembled

Step 5: Installing the Device

The final part is installing the device to the tank and make it working. First start with installing the water sensor in the overhead tank. As in figure this is the tank that we are going to install the sensor. Just survey the tank from every side to see that you can fit the sensing part. Now take the sensor rod that you have prepared and dip into the tank so that it just touches the bottom. Now fix the sensor into the water tank by screwing a screw directly to the water tank so that the water sensor rod doesn't move. The sensor rod should not move. That finishes the part of installing the sensor rod to the water tank. Now to the device that we are going to install. Now for installation of the device you should find a suitable place for easy view of the LED lights. It should also be installed in such a way that it should be out of reach of the children. The best place for installing the device would be in the kitchen of a house. This is because while working in a kitchen you may want to turn on the water pump and just cooking you would be able to get the updates from the tank on how much the water has filled. Just drill two holes in the walls and install it using a L hook. Screw the two L hooks to the device and fix it to the wall. It should be firmly fixed. Then take the A/C 220V feed from any socket and give the power to the board. Thus finishes the installation of the device and test it by turning the device on and checking the water level in the tank. For testing just put the power on and you will see some of the LED's glowing, indicating the level of the tank, if you see only one of the RED glowing then your tank is fully empty and it is time you should turn on your water pump. After the pump is on you will then see after some period of time that the LED's will start to glow from bottom up till the final Blue LED will light up and sound up the alarm. And now we have successfully installed WATER LEVEL INDICATOR.

Image Notes 1. Water sensor rod dipped into the wter 2. The tip of the sensor just touching the bottom of the water tank

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Image Notes 1. Common naked wire line 2. Wire bolt sensors ready to be touched with the water 3. Junction Board

Image Notes 1. Cat 5 cable feed going to the circuit board 2. Nut holding the junction board to the water tank 3. Wires soldered to the board 4. Wires soldered to the board 5. The Sensor Rod

Image Notes 1. Finished installation of the water sensor to the water tank

Image Notes 1. Screw fixing the device to the wall 2. Feed from the water tank coming to the device 3. Junction of the feeds 4. A/C 220 Vcuttent being fed to the device

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Image Notes 1. 220V A/C directly taken from the socket 2. Some of the LED's glowing indicating that the water is below Half 3. Some of the LED's glowing indicating that the water is below Half 4. Feed from the sensor of the Water Tank
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Comments
21 comments Add Comment

aditya swaroop says:

Nov 22, 2012. 3:52 AM REPLY nice instructable,i have a doubt in my mind that which relay should be used in the circuit for adding a small water pump ....plese explain me ...

raikut says:

Nov 22, 2012. 4:12 AM REPLY You can use a 9V compact relay to the bottom 2 LED. But you will only be taking the signal. You should be using a transistor for controlling the relay as i have given a sample circuit diagram in my comment section. Also note that the Ground connection should be connected to common.

aditya swaroop says:

Nov 22, 2012. 3:55 AM REPLY Will the buzzer(alarm) will continuously beep when the tank is full and blue led has lighted up...i yes how to control that buzzer to just beep once and then shutdown....

raikut says:

Nov 22, 2012. 4:09 AM REPLY The simple answer is to put the power off to the unit as you don't need to keep the unit on all the time. Just turn it on when you want to see the water level and then turn it off. But still if you want to automate the you can use an Arduino with a program, it would be complex but you can add it.

amiel2123 says:

Nov 21, 2012. 4:36 AM REPLY Hi.. Im new at doing inventions... can you tell me what the purpose of a relay in this invention...and can I use a power supply for this project? please I need your help.. ( sorry for my bad english)

raikut says:

Nov 21, 2012. 5:34 AM REPLY The purpose of using a relay in the project is to automate the start and stop of the water pump. But i have not used a relay in my project. It is a possibility that you may use a relay in this project. What the relay does is, when the water will fall a certain level the motor will start automatically and again when it reaches a certain level the water pup will stop. So this it what the relay will do if you add it in this project.

amiel2123 says:

Nov 21, 2012. 6:04 AM REPLY Thank you sir... If my mentor approve my project ( this one) I hope that you're around... so i can ask you some questions... thanks for the response sir :)

raikut says:
Any time i am there to help people like you. So go ahead and ask any question if you like.

Nov 21, 2012. 9:55 PM REPLY

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amiel2123 says:
"What Is the purpose"

Nov 21, 2012. 4:37 AM REPLY

mosseltje says:
Hey Raikut, First of all, NICE instructable. Since I'm planning to do something similar with a garden rain reservoir, I've been brainstorming a lot. I've got some questions-remarks about your build. First the Sensors:

Nov 21, 2012. 7:42 AM REPLY

Copper develops a strongly adhering oxide layer, which thickens to acquire the familiar green patina we see on copper roofs. In the presence of atmospheric sulfur dioxide (SO2) the transition from oxide layer to patina is accelerated. In applications such as roofing where the green patina has aesthetic value, the increase in formation of patina is desirable. This is definitely not the case in electrical system applications where the formation of this thick non-conductive patina is undesirable. Where the greenish corrosion product is found on a copper conductor, this corrosion product must be removed by means of a wire brush or emery cloth to ensure low resistance contact between conductor and connector. I'm guessing that your sensors will not last that long. As they will corrode, they will stop conducting the electricity. For my build I need the sensors to work for up to 2 years ( maintanace schedule) How many times per year / month are you going to check the sensors. Secondly, the programming . I would suggest to add a hysteresis loop. You will get a situation where water is just touching a sensor (because of small waves in your tank) the sensor will be switching on and off very rapidly. If you have a relais connected to that sensors state, it will be switching on and off in the same way witch will kill the relais after a while.

food for thought :)

abudiman1 says:
Hi, this is so nice. But, can you show me the circuit that includes relay to the water pump?

Nov 18, 2012. 10:39 PM REPLY

raikut says:

Nov 18, 2012. 11:22 PM REPLY This is fairly easy just after completion of the circuit, take the connection from cathode of the LED to a driver transistor like 2N222 connected to a relay. I have given you the circuit below.

oakironworker says:
thank you this is great I may my students build your design

Nov 12, 2012. 10:46 PM REPLY

gopalyajur says:

Nov 12, 2012. 1:33 AM REPLY The idea seems to be pretty good. Please check the circuit diagram shown step 2, looks like the transistors are reverse biased. Shouldn't the collector and emitter pins be swapped?

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raikut says:

Nov 12, 2012. 9:25 PM REPLY I have checked and double checked with my project, but it seems to me that the schematics are correct, you can physically try it out and get back to me if you have any sort of question.

Foxtrot70 says:

Nov 12, 2012. 8:19 AM REPLY Excellent Instructable!!! A convience item you can add is an on/off relay for the water pump tied to the low LED #2 which would turn on the pump then, the stop relay tied to LED #6. Keep the Alert Buzzer on LED #7 in the event the pump fails to stop coupled with a second stop relay as a fail/safe.

raikut says:
Yes indeed you can! It would be an add on for the project and will be fully automated.

Nov 12, 2012. 9:24 PM REPLY

nlinventor says:
Very enjoyable instructable.

Nov 12, 2012. 3:23 AM REPLY

godfish says:
This is excellent. My father has a rainwater capture system and this would be great for him. Thank you.

Nov 11, 2012. 6:43 PM REPLY

raikut says:
Thank you

Nov 11, 2012. 9:31 PM REPLY

TheStudio7 says:
This is an awesome instructable, very well put together and a great idea for water tanks of all kinds!

Nov 11, 2012. 7:17 PM REPLY

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