Monitoring of Lake Water level possible?

Has anyone come across a sensor scheme that would allow me to monitor lake/water level?

We have an old gravel pit turned lake as our backyard and in the spring the water level can get a little high. I’m not very good at keeping track so I thought it would be a nice thing to add to my overall scheme of weather and home automation.

Got my post in today, getting ready for the Davis that is due to arrive tomorrow. Not an ideal site due to some trees but best I can do as a start. While I was pouring cement I thought about how nice it would be to add lake level monitoring to the setup.

TIA - Heinz
http://www.sunriselake.ca/Sunrise_Lake/MyNeighborhood.html

Are you allowed to put something in the lake? Maybe you have a dock or something that’s already in the water? Could you wire from there to your computer?

Yes, I could put a probe(or?) into the lake. Rather than using the dock, which is not in best of shape, I would probably do whatever fits best once I have an idea of what’s available. The lake is small and private( 1/2x1/4 mile), I.e. owned by all the surrounding residents and as an association we don’t allow power boats, etc. but I can put something in the lake that is non-contaminating.

Would you need to buy a ready made item or are you into tinkering with stuff?

Love to tinker :slight_smile:

Not to the point of designing boards, etc. but tinkering is not a problem. The objective would be to be able to display water level along with rest of my weather data and then save it to mySQL or similar so that I could do a year by year comparison down the road. It wouldn’t have to tie in with the Davis setup as I can bring it together on the website. I run my own site/server and once weather is up will be making it an ‘official’ lake site, but still a hobby for me :slight_smile:

I.e. something I could ‘collect’ via serial port or? All I would need is raw data as I can do a prog to ‘interpret’, send it to the web, etc.

I was thinking of 1-wire, see www.hobbyboards.com to get the data from the sensor to the PC. For the sensor I can quickly think of 3 ideas, build a float/lever thing like a jumbo gas tank sensor, a float with a magnet in a PVC tube with magnetically operated (reed) switches at intervals, a float in a pvc tube with an ultrasonic distance sensor, or maybe you could get a good enough ping back directly from the water, (there are posts on here about an ultrasonic snow depth sensor, this could be very similar). What is the expected water level change?

Water level range might be about 10 feet and depending of where I would be doing the measuring, overall depth might range 10-20 feet. Thanks for the ideas re ultrasonic and 1-wire. Will do some searching.

I am wondering about the Snow death measuring thread. would that work on Water?

Brad

Just looking around your site, looks like your ready for wx data :slight_smile:

Question, where in the world is Sunrise Lake? I couldn’t find anything on your site that would tell me where your located…

Yeah, I’m ready :slight_smile:
Cranked the nearby airport METAR into WD to get a feel for it.

Sunrise Lake is in the Brookswood area of Langley, BC., about 30 miles east of Vancouver.
It’s actually a gravel pit that was developed years ago and is filled with normal ground-water. Hence the up/down with heavy rains, spring/summer variations etc. And since it’s not a public waterway it’s only known by name to the locals.

The site is still a work-in-progress.

Actually the ultrasonic approach should work better with water than it does with snow. Snow works fine except when it is very dry and fluffy. The ultrasonic approach isn’t cheap, but using the sensor described in the following link might be a cheaper alternative.

http://www.parallax.com/dl/docs/prod/audiovis/Distance28015.pdf

All my experimentation has been with the Senscorp sensors which cost about $75 plus some kind of an interface board for 1-wire readings. A relatively cheap approach to the interface board is the HobbyBoards solar sensor and feed the output of the ultrasonic sensor to the Vad pin of the DS2438 chip.

Interesting project, but I don’t have any close by ponds or streams.

:smiley:

Cheers

MikeyM

A similar thread available here that contains some good ideas…

Thanks MickeyM.

Would the ‘ping’ have to be sent vertical, I.e. straight down? If yes, that would eliminate ultrasonic for me as the sensor would have to be on shore so as to be in a constant fixed position. Or do I have the concept wrong? Would the ping get returned by the water surface or the lake bottom? Perhaps a little robot rowboat once a day to a constant spot?

I’ve run across some sensors bases on pressure, which would work great but are outside the budget. A couple of hundred I can sneak by. Much more than that would probably get noticed and may effect my quality of life around the house :slight_smile:

So much more stuff to learn :slight_smile:

I think I found the answer to my (now dumb sounding) questions thanks to following NorCal Dan’s link. Looks like ultrasonic would have to sit above the water via an arm of sorts to measure distance to surface. Looks like I’m stuck with something based of pressure.

That’s why I suggested on a dock, but later I thought of floating docks and of course that wouldn’t work #-o

Not going to throw out the ultrasonic altogether though. May just have to adjust some thinking. Water level becomes more important, or rather more of interest, once it reaches the bottom of our retaining wall. I may consider an ‘arm’ to swing out/extend at that time and measure from that point on. Not quite as useful as monitoring water lever all year long but perhaps a good start.

Could you sneak a wire down into the water, to something on the bottom? If so a pressure sensor would be a good water depth indicator.

That’s now my plan B. No problem to sneak/snake a pressure sensor to a spot that is covered all year. Now to find a sensor within the budget :slight_smile:

Another way is by using piece of PVC drainage pipe, a ping pong ball and an IR range detector. If interested, I’ll find the link that explain it in detail.

Ed

I found that one too. Not applicable for me as you have to work with a known level, I.e. the top end of the PVC has to stick out of the water and when water is low there would be a big pipe sticking out. (The distance between floating pin pong ball and top is measured).

Thank you very much for the thought.

What resolution are you looking for with this project? I still think a pipe is the easiest solution to get accurate measurements. Otherwise the waves will affect the reading. The submerged pressure sounds interesting and expensive. I never got around to making a sensor for my pond and we have sold the house. Don’t need one in the RV :slight_smile: