Water Level Monitoring

 

Measuring water level is an important task from government and residence side. Thus, existing management systems has to be updated. In this paper, we investigate the water level management using ultrasonic sensor which detects the amount of water present in the tank and returns the percentage of water present in it.

There are various types of Water Level Sensors. But we need to consider few factors when choosing a Water Level Sensor for your Project.

• Temperature Compensation

This is most important in applications where temperature can vary over time and seasonality.

• Barometric Pressure

Those in shallow water applications that require a high degree of accuracy.

•  Sensor Construction

The construction materials are important to the long-term ability of the sensor to perform on site.

• Power Sources

What power sources are employed is dependent on the sensor and the application, determining if the sensor is taking line/auxiliary power, running on batteries, or in some cases, both.

On 4-20mA or 0-5vDC sensors, the power supply is the communication protocol as well.

• Analog VS Digital Sensors

Typically, a 4-20mA or 0-5VDC sensor, are considered analog sensors.

It can be programmed for taking readings and user selected intervals or based upon events the sensor detects.  Data collected by these sensors can be downloaded for processing later.

•  Cable Type

Lastly, what type of cable will the sensor be deployed with? Cables can be made differently based on the sensors used.

Let’s consider for example, one of the Sensor which is trending due to  ease of installation & commonly used for detecting Liquid Level is Ultrasonic Level sensor. It  detects the object and measures the distance by following echo principle. Water is also considered as object when a sound ray strikes water it results in generation of echo which is detected by the echo part of ultrasonic sensor.

By measuring the time duration, distance is determined.

It is integrated with LoRaWAN Module to monitor the information via LoRaWAN.

Next, you’ll need a way to transfer data from your water tank monitor to the User Application. This allows you to track water levels remotely. Here LoRa Gateway will act as a bridge to transfer data from Sensor integrated with LoRa Device to the Cloud Network & further to Application Server.

Advantages:

Non-contact measurement, the measured medium is almost unlimited, and it can be widely used for measuring the height of various liquids and solid materials.

Disadvantages:

The measurement accuracy is greatly affected by the temperature and dust of the current environment, hence it should be the factor which is taken care of while using Ultrasonic Level Sensor.