In a rural northern Utah community, a water tank sits halfway up a mountain and is monitored in the valley below. How did they do this? This answer is not with three miles of cable. Instead, they used a remote water level sensor tank monitoring system.
This particular tank is difficult to get to in the summer, and it’s completely inaccessible in the winter. To accommodate the need for water level monitoring, our friends at the small municipality installed line-of-sight radios.
As their remote water level sensor, they chose a simple ultrasonic sensor with a 4-20mA output. You could do the same with an RS-485 Modbus output as well. The radios are a pair of serial wireless adapter radios. The ultrasonic sensor and radios are all powered at the tank with a solar panel and a bank of batteries.
Setting up the radios is painless and takes only a few minutes. Once complete, the remote water level sensor can transmit the signal through the radios up to 3 miles - as long as line-of-sight is maintained.
The same approach works for remote water tank level sensors connected to the Internet. For tanks that are farther away from a landline connection, radios can be used to extend an Internet connection to the water level sensor.
You simply need a Tank Cloud sensor (and perhaps a module – depending on the situation), a pair of Ethernet radios, and a router at the point of Internet connection. If a large distance needs to be covered, more radios can work together to pass the signal along until it reaches the router.
Radios are handy tools for easily setting up a remote water level sensor (or a remote sensor of any kind for that matter). They have become very inexpensive as of late, and are far more accessible than ever before.
If you don't have a landline connection available anywhere, talk to us about integrating with a cellular solution. While more expensive month-to-month than a landline connection - and very limiting - cellular modems can be used to place a remote water level sensor just about anywhere.
If you have any questions about setting up a remote water level sensor, or using radios for remote sensing, contact us right away!
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