Aquaponic DIY Automation Blog

WATER LEVEL INDICATOR – AQUAPONICS quest for a useful one September 13, 2018

THE PROBLEM IN AQUAPONICS  for me —

Up to this point I have wanted to have a simple, but effective water level indicator sensor for the water level in the Balcony Garden fish tank component of the build – that works!

Aquaponic Sensor Set for Balcony Garden  — see section on ultrasonic sensor

I spent a lot of time working with and trying to stabilize a ultrasonic solution.

First off these sensors are not waterproof ( the waterproof version is around $85.00 US  Waterproof version).  The non-waterproof versions run around $5.00 US.  So this would seem the best way to go and work to make it work by using some waterproofing strategies.  Hard to do when working in an aquaponic environment.

Ultrasonic Sensor – Amazon

Next they are very hard to mount in a way that they can be useful to determining water level in a tank.  There are a lot of instructables talking about this aspect for these sensors and even more youtube articles, but most if not all are just demos and breadboard applications.  No real useful solutions that really can be implemented in a scalable way.

Final issue is that I have yet to be able to stabilize these sensors and have wasted a lot of time trying to get them to be reliable in a usable way.

SOLUTION – find a better method or be able to purchase one that actually gets the job done in a simple and affordable and scalable way.