Water Level measurement using cheap Radar sensor

Measure the water level using a cheap HLK-2413 Radar Sensor

Cees Meijer

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Description

Measuring water levels in tanks or on rivers using radar has always been very expensive. Though in recent years prices of these types of radars have come down, the HLK-LD2413 24GHz is in a completely different league. With a price around €10, and the promise of millimeter accuracy it is almost too good to be true.
Unfortunately the documentation on these HLK sensors is often limited, and if it is present it is still hard to get them going. This is my attempt to get the sensor working as a stand-alone instrument.

Components

1 × HLK-2413 The radar sensor itself

Project Logs

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Connecting, and take care of the power
Cees Meijer • 04/14/2026 at 19:23 • 0 comments

According to the datasheet, you can connect the sensor as follows:

And then to a Serial to USB converter:

This may look OK, but there was no way I could get it to work. And when checking the power to the sensor it was found to be 2.5 V. It looks like it is drawing more power than the converter can handle.

So I added an external power supply, and two capacitors to the power line. This works way better.