Red_Beard
Valuable Member
After 4 years my DIY arduino nano ATO finally had a hiccup, lost a relay. So, after some thought i decided to up my game a little and polish it up instead of just zip-tying componants to a breadboard...
TLDR; tell me what you think, hopefully this inspires some of you other tinker-ers too!
Mucho better-o. Took a bit to get my measurements right so i could snap/screw all the components down where they played well with eachother. I also decided to get rid of my failure point and use solid state relays instead. Glad i did too because the mechanical ones made an audible "click", these are dead silent and there arent any moving parts to wear out.
Anyways, i tweaked the program in this one too. It takes measurements from the 2 optical sensors, high and low, every 5 seconds. There are 2 relays in use even though there is only one load. Both relays have to be energized for the pump to run. One is controlled by the high water switch and energized all the time except if it sees too much water. That should cover a stuck pump relay or low water switch scenario. In normal operation, when the low switch doesn't see water, it runs the pump until it does. I did also add in an indicator LED(still thinking about where to put the light) that will light up if the pump runs longer than 2 mins that also shuts off the pump and locks it out until the low water switch sees water again. That will let me know my fresh water tank is empty before i learn of it from the pump squealing from running dry (which worked great but was kinda hard on pumps and was a little freaky at 3AM). Hopefully this setup last longer than 4 years, but either way, i have been quite happy with it so far.
TLDR; tell me what you think, hopefully this inspires some of you other tinker-ers too!
Mucho better-o. Took a bit to get my measurements right so i could snap/screw all the components down where they played well with eachother. I also decided to get rid of my failure point and use solid state relays instead. Glad i did too because the mechanical ones made an audible "click", these are dead silent and there arent any moving parts to wear out.
Anyways, i tweaked the program in this one too. It takes measurements from the 2 optical sensors, high and low, every 5 seconds. There are 2 relays in use even though there is only one load. Both relays have to be energized for the pump to run. One is controlled by the high water switch and energized all the time except if it sees too much water. That should cover a stuck pump relay or low water switch scenario. In normal operation, when the low switch doesn't see water, it runs the pump until it does. I did also add in an indicator LED(still thinking about where to put the light) that will light up if the pump runs longer than 2 mins that also shuts off the pump and locks it out until the low water switch sees water again. That will let me know my fresh water tank is empty before i learn of it from the pump squealing from running dry (which worked great but was kinda hard on pumps and was a little freaky at 3AM). Hopefully this setup last longer than 4 years, but either way, i have been quite happy with it so far.
