SinkGauge

Description

The kitchen sink is a central fixture in many peoples lives and yet very little technology exists to enhance the experience of using one.

Imagine if you will, a kitchen sink that tells you how much water has passed through it. You want a cup of water? No problem, set your SinkGauge to cups and turn it on. Let's say you're baking and you need water to proof your yeast, no problem, SinkGauge includes a temperature readout that tells you exactly how hot your water is.

If you live somewhere with limited water, having a visualization of your usage will help you understand where to reduce.

Future addition: Water cutoff solenoid - This will allow the faucet to cut off at exactly the amount you want. Say you want 2 cups, set it and run the water. It will stop at exactly two cups. Unfortunately this introduces a great deal of complexity to the user interface and adds an inexcusable failure point. If that solenoid fails, it could break your faucet.

Files

SinkGauge.fzz

Fritzing layout file

fzz - 72.36 kB - 03/21/2016 at 17:43

Download

Components

2 × yf-s402 Flow Meter This is an extremely cheap flow sensor that can measure volumes between 0.3 and 6 l/m

2 × 10k NTC Thermistor For the getting of temperatures

1 × Arduino

1 × 1602 Character LCD

Project Logs

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Cheap flow meters are cheap for a reason
Mordecai • 07/11/2016 at 18:26 • 1 comment

I now have four flow meters collecting dust and none of them have threads that can be used in any common application. I assumed that a G3/8 thread was a common 3/8 plumbing thread, turns out no. It's designed for some obscure compression fitting that the local guy at the plumbing store says is only used in dentistry. So after months of waiting for flow meters from China I am left looking for something MUCH more expensive locally. Wish me luck.
Flow Gauges have arrived
Mordecai • 04/20/2016 at 17:16 • 0 comments

The flow gauges I ordered finally came from china which means I can finally get started on prototyping. That will happen as soon as I have time.
Thermisters and Thumb-twiddling
Mordecai • 03/30/2016 at 16:33 • 0 comments

I received the thermisters I ordered and bread-boarded up a simple thermometer just to see something working. Until I receive the flow meters I cant really work on the code. The themister code will need to know what percentage of the water is hot and what percentage is cold in order to get an accurate temperature at the tap.
Layouts and Thumb-twiddling
Mordecai • 03/21/2016 at 17:42 • 0 comments

I've been working on layouts and PCB designs (far future) while I wait for parts to arrive.