Difference between revisions of "How to Build a River Gauge"
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==System Overview== | ==System Overview== | ||
The diagram below gives an overall picture of the system. At the river end, the system is broken into two parts. At the bottom of the river, bolted to an existing stick gauge (or some other convienient location) is a differential pressure sensor. This sensor measures the difference in pressure between the athmosphere and the bottom of the river. To make this differential measurement , one side of the sensor is connected to a breather tube and the other end is open to the surrounding water. The pressure difference P=ρgh , where ρ is density, g is 9.81m/s2 and h is the height between the sensor and the surface of the water. The small signal voltage is amplified by an instrumentation amplifier chip. | The diagram below gives an overall picture of the system. At the river end, the system is broken into two parts. At the bottom of the river, bolted to an existing stick gauge (or some other convienient location) is a differential pressure sensor. This sensor measures the difference in pressure between the athmosphere and the bottom of the river. To make this differential measurement , one side of the sensor is connected to a breather tube and the other end is open to the surrounding water. The pressure difference P=ρgh , where ρ is density, g is 9.81m/s2 and h is the height between the sensor and the surface of the water. The small signal voltage is amplified by an instrumentation amplifier chip. | ||
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When the system receives a phone call, it examines the caller id to see if an administrator is calling. If it is an admin, the system allows the remote phone to ring once and then hangs up. An sms is sent to the administrator containing the most recent level, the level from 30min previous, the level from 60 min previous and the current state of the 12V battery. If the caller id is not that of an admin, the system will answer the call and give a series of beeps to indicate the most recent level. | When the system receives a phone call, it examines the caller id to see if an administrator is calling. If it is an admin, the system allows the remote phone to ring once and then hangs up. An sms is sent to the administrator containing the most recent level, the level from 30min previous, the level from 60 min previous and the current state of the 12V battery. If the caller id is not that of an admin, the system will answer the call and give a series of beeps to indicate the most recent level. | ||
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[[Image:System2.png]] | [[Image:System2.png]] | ||
Revision as of 21:37, 7 December 2008
http://pei.ucc.ie/daithi/construction.html
System Overview
The diagram below gives an overall picture of the system. At the river end, the system is broken into two parts. At the bottom of the river, bolted to an existing stick gauge (or some other convienient location) is a differential pressure sensor. This sensor measures the difference in pressure between the athmosphere and the bottom of the river. To make this differential measurement , one side of the sensor is connected to a breather tube and the other end is open to the surrounding water. The pressure difference P=ρgh , where ρ is density, g is 9.81m/s2 and h is the height between the sensor and the surface of the water. The small signal voltage is amplified by an instrumentation amplifier chip.
The sensor board is connected to the controller board via a 3-core cable. One wire carries a 10V supply to the sensor board. Another wire carries the analog pressure signal back to the controller. The third wire is a ground. The controller board is mounted somewhere on the river bank, in a weather-proof box along with a 12V battery and an old mobile phone. A solar panel is mounted above the box so the location should have an unobstructed view of the southern sky. If vandalism is a concern, the system should perhaps be mounted on top of a tree or a high pole.
Every 15 minutes, the controller board powers up the sensor board and reads the signal once per second for thirty seconds. The measurements are averaged so that the reading is not affected by surges in the water level. Once the reading has been taken, it is stored in memory and the system goes into a low power mode until it is time to take the next reading. Once a day at 09:00, the 96 measurements taken the previous day are collated into a single sms message and sent to an email gateway. The email generated is read by a server which updates the wap and web sites.
The phone that is used is an old Siemens M35, but I think that the command set is the same for all of the M,C and S 25 and 35 phones. The phone does not contain its own battery. (The batteries in those phones were fairly bad anyway) Instead it runs from a supply taken from the 12V battery via a dc-dc converter.
When the system receives a phone call, it examines the caller id to see if an administrator is calling. If it is an admin, the system allows the remote phone to ring once and then hangs up. An sms is sent to the administrator containing the most recent level, the level from 30min previous, the level from 60 min previous and the current state of the 12V battery. If the caller id is not that of an admin, the system will answer the call and give a series of beeps to indicate the most recent level.
