I'm totally new to Arduino and electronics projects in general, but I do have some coding experience/CS degree from long ago.
I'd like to put together an ultrasonic sensor to measure the level of oil in my house's heating oil tank, and make it talk to SmartThings. It looks like I can use a sensor like this one and a Z-Uno Shield. Then I'd need to figure out how to write a custom SmartThings device handler to talk to it and make SmartThings work with it.
Does this seem like I'm on the right track? It was really surprising to me that there aren't existing Z-Wave oil tank sensors...seems like I can't be the only one who wants to do this but the most recent threads I've found here or anywhere are minimum 3-4 years old.
Finding a useful sensor that works in that environment, both chemicaly and geometricaly, is important. A Swedish Company, once named "SAAB Marine"built an sold tank measuring devices for the tanker shipping industry. They used radar but that is probably way too costly to think of.
You questions is not new, measuring the level of liquids in a tank. You can search for such topics and find useful information, telling both what's good and what's less good.
Although heating oil is hard to ignite you have to assume that the headspace in an oil tank may contain light hydrocarbon vapours and so can be flammable and even explosive.
If you stick anything into the headspace in an oil tank you need to be sure it is rated for that environment it seems very unlikely that the sensor you linked to is.
Also the fumes that come off the oil will be heavier than air so if they escape from the tank they will flow like water and can pool. Even if the tank is outside the fumes might flow into a basement. If the tank is supposed to be sealed you will need to be sure that passing cables into it do not compromise that. The cables themselves need need to be impervious to the effects of the fumes which may dissolve some plastics.