Open Flow Meter

Description

Update: 31/05/2024
I think the best kind of future flow meter for my use case is this project: https://github.com/localdevices/pyorc Build this into a phone app and then get rid of the need for hardware.

Build a flow meter to measure water speed in rivers.The current build shows water speed in Km/h and costs about 60USD for all the parts (a typical off the shelf unit will cost about USD1000).

Motivation
Flow meters are great tools for river surveys but are often prohibitively expensive, especially for secondary schools and field studies centres. LabQuest has somewhat of a monopoly on these sensors for use in schools and we think its high time there is an easy to make, low cost and hackable solution for these tools. Here I'm using an Auduino, plus touch screen shield and a 'flow volume sensor' designed for measuring flow volume in plumbing.

Details

Field Test:
They are multiplying:

Improvements since the DN50 build: Internal battery housing, on/off switch, aviation connector, DN80 sensor, detachable sensor pole.

Here is one of the earlier designs using an DN50 sensor.

Files

Wiring_diagram_2.pdf

Wiring diagram for the Arduino housing and battery box.

Adobe Portable Document Format - 468.35 kB - 09/23/2022 at 11:35

Preview

IMG_1904.JPG

Parts list excluding 3D printed parts, wood screws and internal wires.

JPEG Image - 2.17 MB - 06/23/2021 at 09:02

Preview

Arduino hosing n battery 2.FCStd

FreeCAD Auduino Housing

fcstd - 6.96 MB - 12/17/2020 at 05:57

Download

DN80 mount.FCStd

FreeCAD Sensor links

fcstd - 4.40 MB - 12/17/2020 at 05:56

Download

Components

1 × DN80 water sensor 3"

1 × Arduino Uno R3 (clones also work)

1 × HiLetgo 2.4 Inch TFT LCD Display Shield Touch Panel ILI9341 240X320 for Arduino UNO MEGA

1 × length of 3 strand wire (we used silicon copper wire as its really soft and flexible)

1 × 9V battery

Project Logs

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Update wiring diagram

Eben • 09/23/2022 at 11:37 • 0 comments

Update wiring diagram after finding a few errors when building some new units this month.

I won the Hackaday Earth Day Challenge 2021

Eben • 06/11/2021 at 02:04 • 0 comments

Thanks Hackaday for awarding my project the winner of the Earth Day Challenge 2021 https://hackaday.io/contest/176995-earth-day-challenge

Added meters per second readout

Eben • 03/29/2021 at 11:27 • 0 comments

The new calibrated version of the skit file is ready for download under V5 from our Gitlab.
We added meters per second to the display readout so now you can see both Kph and M/S.

Calibration

Eben • 03/27/2021 at 15:32 • 0 comments

Calibration with a commercially made flow meter:

In the image above we have the commercial flow meter on the left, a m/s to km/h conversion in the centre and the open flow meter on the right.

At first the open flow meter was providing a reading 4 times faster than the reading from the commercial unit, but after adjusting some settings both units give quite similar readings. Additional work needs to be done, however so far this will be more than good enough for GCSE, A Level and IB students usage.

Battery Lid

Eben • 12/29/2020 at 08:31 • 0 comments

The battery lid now fits better and the new version has been uploaded to: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4700913 Make sure to print the new version as the old version did not fit!

24 hour submersion test

Eben • 12/25/2020 at 04:53 • 0 comments

Here I leave the sensor in water for 24 hours to see if the silicon waterproofing of the electronics works.

When I switched on the control box and turned the prop, it still worked as before, so I'm happy enough with this waterproofing technique for now.

First complete unit

Eben • 12/24/2020 at 15:03 • 0 comments

Here is the first fully assembled unit:

Sensor testing

Eben • 12/19/2020 at 03:50 • 0 comments

I tested a range of different pipe sensors at the start of this project back in April 2019:

Build Instructions

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1

Print all the 3D printed parts

Download the parts from here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:470091

After printing, clean up the prints and make sure everything fits together.
2

Asemble the sensor end with the DN80

Unscrew the black box from the top of the sensor by removing the two fillips head screws.

Use a knife blade to carefully pry open the small black box with the 3 wires coming out of it. There maybe some black silicon round the edge where the wires enter the box.

Get the long 3 strand cable that your going to use to connect your sensor to the Arduino and prepare the ends for soldering.

Take a photo of the sensor PCB before you unsolder the wires, now use a soldering ion to carefully unsolder the three wires leading from the small PCB and sensor.
(My sensor had a black, red and yellow wires and my new cable also had black, red and yellow wires inside).

Important: put the cable through the 3d printed plastic housing before soldering the PCB onto the wire and and add some layers of Shrink rap to the cable.

Solder your new cable to the sensor PCB the same as the wires were soldered before: black to black, red to red and yellow to yellow. If your wires are a different colour then just make a note of the colour difference.

Now cover the PCB in silicon and fill the black plastic box with silicon too. Then put the sensor back inside the box and squeeze it shut. Now screw it back onto the rest of the DN80.

Pull the 3D printed cover down on top of the DN80 and zip-tie it in place, now leave it until the silicon is dry.

Slide the shrink rap tubes down to cover the wire all the way down to the black sensor box and use hot air to shrink them in 3 layers on top of each other.

Take the 2 M3 nuts and bolts and add the cable gripper, this stops the wire getting pulled out of the sensor and braking or braking the waterproofing.

Solder the wire end of the aviation connector to the main cable. I put pin 1 as red, pin 2 as yellow and pin 3 as black. Put the connector back together.
3

Build the battery box & Aduino hosing

Download the wiring diagram from the files section.
Solder the power wires to the bottom of the Arduino first. Then put the TFT display onto the Arduino.
Put the housing side of the aviation connector into the housing and lock it in place with the screw thread.
Put the power switch into the housing as well (it will simply snap into place).
Put the TFT display and Arduino into the lower housing being careful to find a good path for the power wires.
Put the battery holder into the lower housing (it will be loose until you put the upper housing in place and screw it down).
Now solder the wires together as shown in the wiring diagram.
Check all your connections.
Put the upper housing on top and move the battery holder in place so everything lines up.
Screw the top down with 6 wood screws.
Put in a battery.
Link the sensor up and power on the unit.

View all 3 instructions

Discussions

Bjoern wrote 11/15/2024 at 09:30

Thanks a lot for sharing this nice project! We constructed one and tested it the last days on a field trip with students. We also compared it with a highly sensitive commercially available flowmeter and it worked very well! We maybe will do some adjustments in terms of height adjustability of the sensor. NICE WORK !!!

Are you sure? yes | no

alexoh wrote 05/29/2024 at 09:53

With regards and respect
and thanks for the good project that you posted,
I had a question. I would appreciate it if you could answer.
I uploaded the program on the required hardware and ran it well, but unfortunately, before connecting to the sensor, the Arduino got some numbers by shaking it. It is displayed on the flow rate without conecting to sensor!

It shows a very high current flowrate just by shaking the arduino board itself before connecting to the sensor which makes me a little worried for the accuracy of the work does it throw this error when connected to the sensor?

Are you sure? yes | no

Eben wrote 05/29/2024 at 10:32

I have not seen this behaviour before. I have lots of these arduino's connected to shields, with no sensor they just show 0.00 for me.

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rpahydro wrote 11/26/2023 at 15:04

Great design and appreciate you sharing the information. It appears from the sketch that you are taking 10 one second readings and then averaging them. Did you find a significant variation between the one second readings? Thanks.

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Eben wrote 05/29/2024 at 10:34

Sorry I did not write the code. I just did the hardware design. I would like to change the code to show 3 decimal places instead of two. But have never managed to work out how to do it!

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lefsky wrote 08/06/2021 at 20:33

I worked with the good folks at Colorado State University's Hydraulics Lab (https://hydraulicslab.engr.colostate.edu/) on the calibration of a series of flow velocity sensors including the DN-80 sensor used for this project. We ran their fume from near-still water conditions up to 0.4 m/s flow rate and hung a Marsh McBirney flow meter along with the DN80 for an open channel calibration. The lowest stream velocity the DN-80 could record using a 5 sec integration time was 0.025 m/s but above that limit, a linear regression between the DN80 and MM estimates had an r2 of 0.9955, with a bias of -0.004 m/s and RMSE (aka standard deviation of residuals) of 0.009 m/s. Will try to get larger range of observations in the future but this is a very good start, IMHO. Photo of DN80 in the flume is at

https://photos.app.goo.gl/iHZ2Cd89UM8E9uDn9

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Eben wrote 10/15/2021 at 04:34

That's really interesting, thanks for telling me about your work and do update on any further testing or developments.

Also Sorry! For some reason I did not receive the email I normally get when people comment, so my reply is months late!

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Jules wrote 02/23/2024 at 19:57

This is really cool - Can the results of the rest of this project be found anywhere?

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Eben wrote 05/29/2024 at 10:36

Rest of the project?

Are you sure? yes | no

Jules wrote 05/29/2024 at 18:40

Sorry I'm new to this platform, I meant that in response to @lefsky 's post about using this sensor along with others at CSU's Hydraulics lab

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flavio pardo wrote 03/09/2024 at 13:22

hi, is there any way we could get that calibration? It would be awesome! Thanks

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Eben wrote 05/29/2024 at 10:36

The calibration was hard coded into the skit already for the DN-80.

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lefsky wrote 06/23/2021 at 17:09

Wow- this is great. So many issues I hadn't thought of! The one thing I could still use is any suggestions on soldering to the existing solder pads as I've never done this before. Is it done with a plain soldering iron or some other tool? What temperature did you use?

Thanks so much for the help.

Are you sure? yes | no

Eben wrote 06/24/2021 at 01:48

You can look round YouTube for tutorials on soldering, there are many. Any soldering ion that is small enough to independently melt the solder on each pin will be ok. Better to practice on something else first but it's not that difficult. I used a pare of 'helping hands' to hold the wires and PCB of the sensor as that is very small.

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lefsky wrote 06/20/2021 at 22:27

I'm assembling the flow meter now but I have a number of questions that I can't find the answer to. But one of those questions is: is there any documentation other than the youtube videos?

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Eben wrote 06/21/2021 at 02:17

Um! I keep meaning to sit down and write instructions on assembly. But I have not done it yet!
Do you have all the printed parts?
I think they fit together quite easily, but I need to upload the wiring diagram, I'm sure without that it will be very hard to complete!

Are you sure? yes | no

lefsky wrote 06/21/2021 at 20:25

I have completed the sensor assembly and have put together the Arduino/touch screen combination which is running the program fine. I just need to attach the two. The info I need is: 1) better information on the switch and aviation connector so I can purchase the correct ones, 2) the wiring diagram, 3) suggestions on how to best solder the wires from the aviator connector to the touchpad screen (like where to apply heat)

Edit: Also could use information on what the smallest piece (rectangular with two complete holes and a semicircle take out of it)

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Eben wrote 06/22/2021 at 04:53

OK, I will see what I can do, I will get a full wiring diagram made in the next few days and upload it.
I will post the dimensions of the connectors, switch and battery mount I use along with photos.
That smallest pace is for the sensor end, it holds the wire in place with two 3mm bolts. Without this the wire would get pulled out of the sensor and or the movement may let water inside.

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Eben wrote 06/23/2021 at 09:24

Have a look, I added some files, updated the components list and wrote some build instructions. Let me know how it goes and do send me a photo when you finished building it. Good luck.

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Dan Maloney wrote 12/18/2020 at 22:16

Yes, my sensor is a smaller version made for 3/4" pipe, and I calibrated it while it was plumbed up to such pipe. In my case, the exact volume needs to be known, but it seems like the number needs to be more relative in your application.

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Dan Maloney wrote 12/17/2020 at 17:55

I'm curious how you calibrated the flow sensor. I'm working on a similar project (https://hackaday.io/project/175782-water-flow-monitor) and managed to get my sensor calibrated gravimetrically. Wondering what method you used.

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Eben wrote 12/18/2020 at 13:03

Thanks for sharing. Am I right that your system is to measure flow volume (litres of water pumped per unit of time)?

I'm working on a sensor that can be put on a poll to measure flow speed in a river. In your case it should be easier as the pipe sensor you have is designed for measuring volume. I brought quite a few different pipe sensors to test out but settled on the largest one I could find as that was able to give better readings in slow moving water.
I'm not aware of anything to calibrate on the sensor. It just pulses once for every rotation of the prop and you can use that combined with knowing the width of the pipe to measure how much water passes through.
I will update my project here once I get the hardware sorted out a bit more about the accuracy of the unit. However for my use case it dose not need to be very accurate, it's just for teaching children how to do data collection in the field (the data they collect is not going to be used for anything).

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Open Flow Meter

Description

Details