Greg Gdowski
Active Member
A few weeks back I began toying around with the idea of migrating from my Apex to a Hydros. What had held me back was that I had many components on the Apex that I didn't want to have to reinvest in new things. One of these items was the water level sensors that are used in the Apex ATO unit.
There have been many posts in the reef pi thread about how to interface the sensors from DFRobot that can be had from arrow electronics for about $7-8. These sensors are remarkably like the ones from my Apex. The interesting factoid is that they are meant to be mounted through a hole in the vessel. As such, they are not waterproof on the back side. After reading that --- I could actually see humidity within the optical sensor that came with my Apex ATO. Hmm.
Some have suggested just siliconing it. I wanted to come up with a way to waterproof it and hold it in place.
In a nutshell... we came up with a 3d-printed slip fitting for a 1/2" pvc pipe that could be placed in my sump. That allowed me to mount them as specified, and to hold them at specific depths within my sump and the reservoir for my ATO. It ended up being pretty cool. The fitting has a hex nut interior so that you can use it to tighten the retaining nut of the sensor. In this configuration, all of the components that are not water tight are within the pipe. The sensor can now be placed anywhere pretty easily. I'll be using 4 of these interfaced to the digital inputs of the hydros. Good cheap solution given how much the newer waterproofed sensors cost. Replacing the sensor is now as easy as turning a screw.
There have been many posts in the reef pi thread about how to interface the sensors from DFRobot that can be had from arrow electronics for about $7-8. These sensors are remarkably like the ones from my Apex. The interesting factoid is that they are meant to be mounted through a hole in the vessel. As such, they are not waterproof on the back side. After reading that --- I could actually see humidity within the optical sensor that came with my Apex ATO. Hmm.
Some have suggested just siliconing it. I wanted to come up with a way to waterproof it and hold it in place.
In a nutshell... we came up with a 3d-printed slip fitting for a 1/2" pvc pipe that could be placed in my sump. That allowed me to mount them as specified, and to hold them at specific depths within my sump and the reservoir for my ATO. It ended up being pretty cool. The fitting has a hex nut interior so that you can use it to tighten the retaining nut of the sensor. In this configuration, all of the components that are not water tight are within the pipe. The sensor can now be placed anywhere pretty easily. I'll be using 4 of these interfaced to the digital inputs of the hydros. Good cheap solution given how much the newer waterproofed sensors cost. Replacing the sensor is now as easy as turning a screw.
