DIY submersible pump controller helps retrieve effectively water
— June sixth, 2024
It’d shock our urban-dwelling readers, however wells are nonetheless quite common in rural areas the place it’s troublesome or prohibitively costly to run utilities. The CDC stories that greater than 15 million households depend on groundwater and wells — and that’s simply in the US. However few folks haul up previous picket buckets of water, which is electrical pumps are available in. Vishal Roy developed a DIY controller good for submersible groundwater pumps.
Roy beforehand had a centrifugal pump to drag up groundwater and fill a holding tank, however that pump was failing. As a result of it wanted alternative anyway, Roy determined to go forward and swap to a submersible pump that might possible be extra dependable. However the submersible pump he bought got here with a handbook management panel, which might introduce a brand new chore. That motivated Roy to construct this Arduino-based controller that routinely runs the submersible pump to fill the holding tank at any time when the extent drops under a set level.
The holding tank has a traditional water stage sensor system consisting of three uncovered wires appearing as capacitive sensors at completely different heights. This sensor design isn’t exact, however it’s cheap and dependable, and precision isn’t vital for this job, anyway.
The pump itself has a big electrical motor that requires a startup sequence that first costs up a beginning capacitor. Roy was capable of replicate that utilizing the Arduino Nano, which connects the 2 beginning circuits utilizing a Seeed Studio relay module. When the Arduino detects the water under a threshold within the holding tank, it toggles the relays to start out the pump motor. As soon as sufficient water fills the tank to succeed in the best sensor, the Arduino turns the motor again off.
Now Roy has a dependable approach to routinely hold the holding tank stuffed with water.