Water pump monitor ideas

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Glassboy

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#1091039 17-Jul-2014 21:25

SumnerBoy: I have never tried IFTTT as everything rules based is handled by openHAB for me.

IFTT stays for If This Then That. It allows you to create recipes over all sorts of things. For example If someone tags you in a photo in Facebook save it to Google Drive. Or if you tag something to read later in Feedly then save the link into a Google Docs spreadsheet.

SumnerBoy

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#1091044 17-Jul-2014 21:27

Yep - kind of know what it is about, basically a rules engine that lives in the cloud. Just not sure what sort of API is available - for instance how easy it would be for openHAB to trigger some IFTTT rules. Vice versa would be no problem, using HTTP as mentioned above.

Aredwood

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#1091097 17-Jul-2014 22:45

lapimate:
turb: ... Can anyone think of a cheap, nifty way to do this, ...

Is it a 230V 50Hz pump motor? Friend solved similar by putting an ordinary self-starting mains powered electric clock in parallel w. his pump. Clock runs only when pump power is "on". The clock will show how many hours pump on overnight.

Another way of doing the same thing. Get one of these style of plug in timers. http://www.trademe.co.nz/building-renovation/electrical-lighting/switches-switchboards/switches/auction-754696437.htm Set it so that it is "always on". Rotate the dial to 12AM, and the dial will only rotate when power is on so will record run time.

Hammerer

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#1092400 20-Jul-2014 11:16

turb:
I want to be able to monitor the water pump for a period of time to see how much it is running in hours of darkness. And maybe plot the results to see if it is regular.

Can anyone think of a cheap, nifty way to do this, that doesn't involve me sitting under the floorspace all night with a stopwatch?

I have a PC just a couple of metres away - I was thinking some sort of sensor that would pick up the electric current flowing when the pump is running?

In the first instance you just want to see how long the pump is running so you just need to measure the power used by it with an electrical clamp meter around the cable to the pump. You can probably find a friend who has one you can borrow.

Normally the controllers are simple and don't control the pump speed. If your controller does controller the pump speed then it would be a lot more complicated if you then wanted to calculate how much water it is pumping or how long it is on for.

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