Close

prototype readout hardware

A project log for automated gardening - reservoir infrastructure

Building Reservoirs and Weighing Water for level gauging and flow metering.

helgehelge 04/15/2018 at 18:160 Comments

Since this is one of the projects that caters to beginners and experienced makers how don't have much time to spend on "just getting it to work", we're using microcontroller and breakout boards which are popular and readily available.

Here we have a 4-wire dummy load cell, HX711 breakout board, Arduino Nano V3 clone and two MAX485 breakouts for RS485. It's also planned to add an SK6812 LED ring for status indication and low water warning (annoyingly blinking red LEDs, you get the idea) but these have yet to arrive. Checking the voltages reveals that at least the load cell excitation and output voltages seem to be nominal.

Since it's a popular, open protocol and other industrial process automation equipment is also available, I'm thinking Modbus RTU might be the way to go. It's timing critical for the slaves so prototyping should be ok with an FT232 or UART-Ethernet interface.

To be continued.

Discussions