Hi All,
I am wondering if anyone has tried to handle an ultrasonic transmitter/receiver pair, e.g., the TS-2 ( https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003023632184.html ), directly with an ESP32 without the TUF-2000M unit. The TS-2 transducer is cheap (~€26), and we will need an ESP32 for the ESPHome anyway, so why the ~€150 controller as well?
I aim to install a cheap water flow meter on existing pipes without plumbing. As an engineer, I’m not concerned about the calculations and calibrations side of the story, I can work that out on my own. I’m more interested in the interfacing (HW and SW) of the sensors and the measurement of the echo’s time.
If we can make it work, this cheap transducer would be a big hit in the HA community.
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might want to read here:
Seems like results vary even with the tuf-2000m. I doubt you will get accurate results with just the sensors. You will need to reverse engineering the method the tuf-2000m is using.
Sensus has a couple of lines of water meters that use the ultrasonic method of measuring. This is the newer one
Sensus ECCUS® Smart Ultrasonic Water Meter | Xylem Antigua and Barbuda
I heard that some utilities got rid of their iPearl installations because too many people complained about being over charged for their actual usage.
The ultrasonic ones certainly have specifications for much lower flow (starting a 2.5 liter/hour) than more standard positive displacement flow meters (liters/min).
It really depends on what you are trying to achieve. This is the math that is involved:
https://www.sierrainstruments.com/blog/?ultrasonic-flow-meter-works
You then need to figure out the resonant frequency of the transducers and/or how the control unit talks to them. This is not a simple project.
This might help: TIDM-ULTRASONIC-FLOW-TDC reference design | TI.com
If you are really good with electronics design and software, I will bet you could come up with a proof of concept in a few weeks or so.
I just bought actual water meters on eBay, which was still pretty challenging getting them to work with my automation system.
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Thank you! The TI link is a game-changer!
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Did you made any progress with project? Or found another solution? I’m looking into external flow meters options. Thank you.
I have purchased TUF-2000B, and it’s not expesive really for thing it does. As an engineer, my intention was to build energy meter, which doesn’t differ that much from flow meter, major difference being temp sensors.
After some math and protyping with software and hardware, I noticed quite soon it’s not definitely worthy DIY, not from the point of cost, or work hours required. You can get TUF-2000 for less than 150€ /170$. TUF-2000 is IP67 packaged measurement instrument with better than ±1% accuracy, has serial interface and ModBus, three additional AD-converters, 110/230AC and 5V-36VDC power supply etc. When you make it yourself, you are likely to end up paying more and worse accuracy and far less features. As owner of TUF-2000 and engineer, I’m quite sure it won’t be hit, even if community is definitely full of DIY-folks like myself.
TUF-2000 need good alignment of sensors, acoustic couplant and proper location in piping to work properly. So does DIY-unit, propably it needs even better conditions, since professionally designed and manufactured instrument is likely to have some kind of error correction procedures, as it does have signal quality indicators etc. and builtin pipe material and fluid databases.