Differential Pressure Sensor + Arduino

Has anyone tried to interface a 'differential pressure sensor' with an Arduino? For my senior project I want to develop a prototype Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) which will monitor water level. I'm thinking of using a differential pressure sensor + Arduino FIO + Xbee PRO 802.15.4 for my "mote".

I want to know if its possible to use this sensor for Arduino with a only Polymer Lithium Ion Battery - 2000mAh as the only power source.

This image is from another study which tried to build a river monitoring system with its own controller board and did not use Arduino.

It's all about the specifications of your specific DP sensor. You really need to have it's datasheet to see what voltage it requires to operate and what signal level it spans for it's measurement range. With that data in hand it should be no problem interfacing it will an Arduino. Possibly some external circuitry might be required, but again until you can post a specific datasheet nobody can give actionable advice.

Lefty

oh. sorry here's the datasheet

http://docs-asia.origin.electrocomponents.com/webdocs/0021/0900766b80021a2b.pdf

OK that's a very basic sensor type with no active electronics on board. It simulates a DC resistance bridge and has to have a excitation voltage applied (+5vdc from Arduino and ground should work fine) and then the measurement value is measured from the other two terminals. The problem is this is usually a pretty small voltage range, say 0-100mv. This usually requires an external opamp to raise the measurement range to the 0-5vdc normally used with an Arduino analog input pin. There is a way to have the Arduino use it's internal A/D reference resulting in a 0-1.1vdc measurement range directly.

Anyway there are other DP sensors that include built in electronics but of course they cost more and you seem to already have this basic kind. The first step I would recommend is to research and study basic Wheatstone bridge principles. Here is but just one link to start:

Lefty

There's a project in the book "Practical Arduino" to do exactly this:

practicalarduino.com

Jon
Freetronics: www.freetronics.com

Wow. Thank you so much!!!