Hi there, I’m trying to not buy a 500 Euro salt level sensor for my Judo water softening system.
I’ve looked at various tutorials and read project descriptions. My problem is as follows:
If I use an ultrasound sensor (e.g. HC-SR04) this should work, but only if I accept that I’ll have to drill holes into the salt/water/brine container. Alternatively I’d hope to somehow feed cables out of the container and for example hotglue the sensor inside the container’s lid. This at best looks messy and at worst does not work. Also holes are kinda stupid, as this certainly would lead the manufacturer to refuse any warranty.
Sensors that could go on the outside of the container (made out of plastic / not-metal from what I can see) could include the likes such as the XKC-Y25-PNP. This probably would be perfect, but it’s my understanding, that this sensor only measures liquids.
Does anybody have any ideas? Does the XKC-Y25 also work with non-liquids (e.g. salt)?
Ideally I would not drill holes into the container. I do not need the result to be super precise. All I need is for the sensor to let me know, if the salt level has dropped below a certain level (so I need to know whether the sensor still “sees” salt).
I don’t know if your water softener works like mine but I simply put an aqara leak detector on top of a salt block and let it ride down until it gets wet.
This is on my project list as I have several HC-SR04 units as well as a few esp32 units lying around. I have not thought about how I am going to integrate all this yet but drilling a hole is not a concern for me since there is no warranty with my unit I am concerned with. I will see what other methods I can use though. Maybe some 3m command stripes to hold the sensor in place.
Yeah the holes are an issue for me, since I don’t want to break the device and then have the manufacturer tell me for an unrelated problem that it supposedly relates to the holes.
I’m slightly hoping that the xkc sensor could work, since the salt will contain some liquid… but not sure.
Putting a leak sensor into the tank could work, but then am I not introducing potential contaminants? (just asking, 100% not sure if that’s an issue)
I have a GE water softener and just used 3M double sided tape to fasten both the ultrasonic sensor and the ESP32 board to the fixed portion of the lid. The softener has 2 holes molded in the top so I didn’t have to drill any hole to run the power cable. I put this in a few years ago and have not had any issues.
