spacedcowboy
Community Member
Tanks for the levelling...
So over in my build-thread I was talking about a simple 3D-printable mount for a BRS liquid-level sensor (LLS) if you're trying to measure the level of a tank without a lip for the supplied mount - for example in something like...
... which is what I use for NSW storage. The NSW tanks happen to be at the opposite end of the house to the reef-tank - it's only a little way away (70' or so) but it's weird how quickly "out of sight" can transition to "out of mind". I wanted to keep a figurative eye on how much water I had left in the currently-active tank, so I knew when to switch from the currently-being-used tank to the waiting-to-be-used one...
I used to use a rod with a bunch of float-switches to give me a rough-and-ready idea of when I needed to fill up a tank, but BRS introduced these neat LLS sensors which can read out the depth to a high degree of accuracy on a continuous basis. The problem was mounting them in the above 300-gallon tanks. So here's my answer...
The inner protruding "plug" (that has the cutout for the LLS) is 1.5" in diameter, which makes it an easy fit - just drill a 1.5" hole into a flat part of the top of the tank, and the plug will slide in up until the larger ring. Then the LLS just slides directly into the inner void - which is the exact size so dirt and beasties can't crawl down the LLS and drown in the water...
The 3D design is on TinkerCad here - just "Tinker" it, and export to STL on the right, which will download the STL file to your computer. Slice the STL using your favourite slicing software, print it, and use it. Makes it a breeze to mount to the top of a tank, where there's a flat surface.
And then plug it all into an FMM module, and you get a nice constantly-updated reading of the depth of the tank - and you can even see the trend line to predict when you need to do something about it. Here, for example, is the first water-change on tank-2 ...
(I suspect the "jitter" will become a lot less obvious over time as the level drops)
This is a really simple widget, possibly too simple for a DIY forum
But I thought it would probably never get found if it were just in the build-thread, so here it is
So over in my build-thread I was talking about a simple 3D-printable mount for a BRS liquid-level sensor (LLS) if you're trying to measure the level of a tank without a lip for the supplied mount - for example in something like...
... which is what I use for NSW storage. The NSW tanks happen to be at the opposite end of the house to the reef-tank - it's only a little way away (70' or so) but it's weird how quickly "out of sight" can transition to "out of mind". I wanted to keep a figurative eye on how much water I had left in the currently-active tank, so I knew when to switch from the currently-being-used tank to the waiting-to-be-used one...
I used to use a rod with a bunch of float-switches to give me a rough-and-ready idea of when I needed to fill up a tank, but BRS introduced these neat LLS sensors which can read out the depth to a high degree of accuracy on a continuous basis. The problem was mounting them in the above 300-gallon tanks. So here's my answer...
The inner protruding "plug" (that has the cutout for the LLS) is 1.5" in diameter, which makes it an easy fit - just drill a 1.5" hole into a flat part of the top of the tank, and the plug will slide in up until the larger ring. Then the LLS just slides directly into the inner void - which is the exact size so dirt and beasties can't crawl down the LLS and drown in the water...
The 3D design is on TinkerCad here - just "Tinker" it, and export to STL on the right, which will download the STL file to your computer. Slice the STL using your favourite slicing software, print it, and use it. Makes it a breeze to mount to the top of a tank, where there's a flat surface.
And then plug it all into an FMM module, and you get a nice constantly-updated reading of the depth of the tank - and you can even see the trend line to predict when you need to do something about it. Here, for example, is the first water-change on tank-2 ...
(I suspect the "jitter" will become a lot less obvious over time as the level drops)
This is a really simple widget, possibly too simple for a DIY forum
But I thought it would probably never get found if it were just in the build-thread, so here it is 
