Well… stepped it down one at a time, way down to 100K Ohms resistor…
OH BOY!
So anyone that want to do it with a D1 mini or I guess any other esp8266 based board that isn’t very fancy, as far as I can tell, should use a ~100K resistor
Thank you so much for your dedication to help others and give so much of your time, it’s very much appreciated!
** I will solder the components onto a demo pcb and will print a 3d case for it, I will post here the results
tom_I, thank you for sharing this project and being so responsive with help. I’m entirely new to stuff like this, so forgive me if this post isn’t helpful, but is there any reason not to just stick two bare wires into a sponge for the sensor? I have two like that right now on my ESP32 that seem to be working fine. I was unable to detect water using stainless steel probes (maybe my config is wrong) so that’s why I’m using this method instead.
I originally wanted to detect when the dog’s water bowl got below a certain level using the stainless steel probes. Since that didn’t work I was able to instead use a reed float switch I’ll include the link for if anyone else is interested. The kitchen sink and dishwasher leak sensors were just a bonus since I already had an ESP32 in the same area. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07PZBK5T9/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Minus the sponge that’s exactly what I am doing. Using the touch sensor instead of just relying on water to short the probes should be a bit more sensitive for pure water. Using dosed town water or well water with dissolved solids should work either way.
Did you watch the values reported in the logger and set an appropriate threshold for the touch sensors?
Also for more than one touch sensor you need to remove this:
Sorry, I’m not exactly sure what you mean by setting the threshold for the touch sensors or the values reported in the logger. The ESPHome logs only show whether the sensor state was ON or OFF.
Maybe I’m not configuring them properly as touch sensors? Because I have three of them on the same ESP32 board that are working without removing the iir_filter: 10ms line.
Just build a leak detector based on a d1 mini and I’m having trouble to detect water. Using a 100k resistor like mentioned let’s the probes react on metal but no luck for me with tap water .
Guess I now need to increase the resistor value again till I can detect water - is that right @tom_l?
a good idea, but the picture showsthey have used insulated wire for the sence pair? how would water conduct ?
looking at other sellers it might be the yellow absorbs water and shorts the internal coductors.
I looked at it and could not get anything from it. The resistace did not change when a small section was placed into water. Perhaps a larger amount of cable neaded to be submerged for a long time? but it would not work in my use case.
Came across this topic while trying to get some water leak detector cable working and figured I’d share my findings. Initially I was using a multimeter and couldn’t make any sense of it, but after setting up a touch sensor on an ESP32 I got it working PERFECTLY!
Here’s a helpful diagram clarifying which wires are the sensing ones:
And here’s the relevant ESPHome docs for setting things up:
Connect one of the sensing wires to ground and the other to the touch pin. In my case I got a reading of ~41 when dry and it consistently went all the way to 0 when wet. I was pleasantly surprised how quickly it switched between wet/dry readings, quite a bit better than an old commercial device I’m planning to replace with it! Hopefully this helps someone out!