For my water filtration and softener system I have a bin that I need to keep filled with salt but I always forget about it.
Any suggestions to track the level? As the salt is big hard pieces I can’t use any kind of float device, so I need some suggestions please.
Preferably something wireless as the salt bin isn’t really near any computer.
I believe the usual device for this purpose is an ultrasonic distance sensor. Basically, it measures the distance from the top of the container to the surface of the material (salt in this case) within the container (i.e. it’s measuring the void distance). So if the container is 1 meter tall and the sensor reports 10 cm, that means the container is 90% full.
For those with (what I imagine) are smaller water softener devices which use blocks of salt about 10 x 10 x 40cm tall I have been toying with the idea of sitting a magnet on top of the block next to the side of the case to which a door sensor is attached. When the magnet gets down to the level of the sensor it will trigger a message (if the magnet is strong enough through the plastic case!).
I only thought of this yesterday so I don’t know if it is a practical solution yet. It does have a small advantage of having nothing except a magnet inside the softener so keeping it way from the corrosive salt (if that is a problem?). And it is wireless.
Thanks for the suggestions, looks an ultasonic distance sensor is the way to go. My setup looks the same as the video.
I thought about using the ultrasonic sensor too but then figured it’s too caustic inside the bin so I wouldn’t want to put sensors and electronics in there. I realized that the bin isn’t really attached to anything so I just built a scale with load cells and an esp8266 and it works well. I’m very excited to put it into production.
Here’s a post I just made about it: