I'm able to detect the initial in-rush of water (I see the pulses); however, once pressure has built up in the line I don't see anymore pulses. The flow rating is 2-50 L per minute which may be a little high (1/2 gallon per minute), so I'm going to try the plastic flow sensor instead which is rated for 1-60L per minute (1/4 gallon per minute).
I wanted to see if anyone was measuring drip irrigation water flow and to see what sensor they are using. I get the feeling the plastic one will still be kind of high. Thank you!
I don’t know the flow rate but yes it’s more or less constant once the system gets pressurized. I have a pressure regulator on the inlet (30 PSI) and the source comes from a spigot. I ordered a flow reader to see if I can get the rate.
I think if I can measure down to 1/10 GPH that’d be ok. Any suggestions?
True, but it'd be really nice to calculate a dynamic rate. I've found a few meters that have pulse output which can be as low as 0.25 GPM, but they do get expensive ($70 on flows.com).
I'll try out the plastic sensor and see how it goes. I was hoping someone on the forum has tried measuring flow for their garden using Arduino.
Great news! I just tried the plastic flow sensor and I'm getting flow! It's about 6 pulses per second which is about right. The design of the plastic flow sensor is more of a paddle wheel rather than the propeller design of the brass flow sensor.
I attached a picture for reference. What you're looking at is a small piece of a larger project I've been working on for almost 2 years in spare time. I started off knowing nothing about hardware/Arduino, and now I've designed a custom Arduino LoRaWAN board that can have replaceable daughter boards. It's basically a more refined Arduino board (solar connection, LiFePO4 battery, LoRa, 5V regulator with EN, RTC for deep sleep) which breaks out 20 pins for daughter boards. I've also developed a backend + mobile app to control/configure it all.
Kinda crazy really... I pretty much learned how to do everything on this forum (even SMT hot plate soldering). Anyways...
Can you explain what kind of set-up you are using? What hardware? And what code are you using you read the sensor?
It's an nRF52840 connected to the above hardware. I'm using a hardware timer to count pulses while the valve is open.
