As putting into enclosure and mounting everything together in the The-Auto-Empty-Tank project for more or less reliable operation was quite time-consuming, I thought it maybe worth it to show that sometimes mounting things properly is the most effort of the whole project...
Beside all the fiddling with the almost too small enclosure I unfortunately destroyed a 3 volts homematic sender, which was planned to send a signal to my home automation system, whenever the pump is running ... Unfortunately a 3.3V linear power regulators seems to have a quite big tolerance of around 10% if without load or only small load of an LED. In the end that killed one Homematic HM-Sec-SC-2. :-( Just in case someone knows how to get it alive again, let me know - it blinks normal on start-up at least, but doesn't do anything afterwards anymore.
Putting a diode in line with it eventually did the trick and at around 2.9V this thing seems to work now. It gets switched by the second contact of the relay, which is controlling the pump, so I have a nice data logging now that everything is running well, while not at home.
Further I enhanced the circuit with an additional pushbutton which is allowing for immediate, manual start of the pump as long as level sensor 1 is showing that the pump has still water. If it is pressed for more than 2 seconds it resets any error status.The pushbutton is connected to PD5 with a pull-down resistor of 10k.
Update of the source code for supporting the button you can find here.
For the enclosure I took a quite small box (actually the only one I had left) and decided for 5 pin-plug for connecting the pump and the level sensors in the tank, to keep everything flexible for the time the automatic is not needed. Which is in fact most of the time, except holidays
The "board" needed to be quickly enhanced with the 3.3V power regulator for the sender. Mounting is a bit special, but there was really no more space on the board. Luckily double-sided tape sticks quite well to a relay... :-)
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| 3 volts device killed by 3.6 volts |
Putting a diode in line with it eventually did the trick and at around 2.9V this thing seems to work now. It gets switched by the second contact of the relay, which is controlling the pump, so I have a nice data logging now that everything is running well, while not at home.
Further I enhanced the circuit with an additional pushbutton which is allowing for immediate, manual start of the pump as long as level sensor 1 is showing that the pump has still water. If it is pressed for more than 2 seconds it resets any error status.The pushbutton is connected to PD5 with a pull-down resistor of 10k.
Update of the source code for supporting the button you can find here.
For the enclosure I took a quite small box (actually the only one I had left) and decided for 5 pin-plug for connecting the pump and the level sensors in the tank, to keep everything flexible for the time the automatic is not needed. Which is in fact most of the time, except holidays
The "board" needed to be quickly enhanced with the 3.3V power regulator for the sender. Mounting is a bit special, but there was really no more space on the board. Luckily double-sided tape sticks quite well to a relay... :-)
Squeezing everything inside was a bit more difficult, but kind of saved extra mounting of the small board inside. Definitely nothing moves in there anymore if the lid is closed. :)
And here we go. The "tank controller" and its power adapter I've mounted with velcro-like strips, so I can take them off quickly. The other box below is for switching the dehumidifier itself remotely on and off, which is done by the homeautomation system every night. The hose is leaving the tank via an pre-prepared opening in the dehumidifier for connecting hoses. (which one can connect directly in case there is a drain that is lower then the dehumidifer)
Done. :-)
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