sensor connectors for use outside

Using Arduino General Electronics
21

Just to update everyone on what I decided to do. I bought some of these:

I stick the pins of the hall sensor right into the female jumper wires, then wrap the whole thing in electrical tape, then tape that to the outside of the tank. On the inside, I have a pvc I sawed in half and duct taped to the wall of the tank (which in my case is just a plastic tote box). Inside of the half pvc, I have a simple float made of styrofoam with some rare earth magnets duct taped to the bottom. Put it all together and you have a cheap float sensor.

Originally, I wanted to wire several hall sensors together in series to eliminate the number of wires running a longish distance. There still isn't an elegant solution to this problem, but now I can at least try to wire in series away from the hall sensor pins. But it's such a hassle, so I'll probably just run redundant ground and 5v wires all the way out to the sensors. If I try again to wire in series, I will connect the other end of the female jumper cables to these:

22

Shrink tubing with hot-melt adhesive inside is good for watertight connections. You can find it at a lot of online suppliers and it's even showing up in hardware and automotive supply shops.

You can also put connections inside a watertight enclosure and use gland nuts for your cables to make something that is pretty much watertight.