Automated Water Pump

Hey,

Sorry for the delay in post updates, which was primarily due to exams and busy schedules. Okay! Let's move on to work. Often, I see my mom running to the kitchen as soon as the tank gets filled and the water overflows, to open up the tap, thus saving a bit of it being overflown. It's been long that I've looking to come up with a solution to this problem. At last- 'An Automated Water Pump Mechanism.'

The whole project actually took around 3 days to complete and a month of planning. The original idea was to make the system fully autonomous so that whenever the water drops below a certain value, the pump would get turned ON and another threshold for turn OFF. But adding to the design constraint, if the system is fully autonomous, the system would turn ON despite the irregularities of Voltage in our state (Kerala), that would further lead to other problems.

Hence I stick on to the idea of turning ON  the system once which will shut the system OFF once the tank is filled, and we could turn OFF the main switch at any time as we like. Its like 'turn ON once, and OFF as you like' system :D.





Purchasing the items.

230v 30A relay      -   ₹250
Digispark Board    -    ₹94
Hygrometer            - ₹20
12v 1A Supply       -     ₹70
Speaker Wire         - ₹150
Miscellaneous   
Total                      - ₹600

As I thought of dealing with a 1.5Hp motor which would consume little over 1kW as its peak, hence bought a 230v 5A relay and peripheral components, but the idea was soon broken with the realization of the actual consumption of the motor (Tested the current draw with a clamp meter which registered a peak current draw of 15A). The motor actually consumes 3kW to 4kW at peak for its starting condition for about 2 to 3 seconds and runs with continuous consumption of 8A which settles at 6.6A at the end. Coupling with a 5A relay would have made me a cracker surprise. Hence, I bought a 230v 30A relay from aliexpress which delayed this project due to its long shipping time.

NOTE:

Though the relay is rated for 5v signal, it won't work unless you give a power supply of 12v (which is necessary to energize the coil), whereby you can connect the relay and the development board to the same source, as the board has a voltage regulator inbuilt.

Also, instead of using an Arduino Uno board, I tried the DigiSpark ATTINY 85 development board, which had sufficient memory and GPIO pins for its usage. Complementing the parts, the heart of the build was a Hygrometer from China.

I gathered all the components and made the circuit for the system, I tested the circuits with repetitively after turning ON/OFF periods, ensuring nothing burned up. After which I had installed the hygrometer in position in the Tank and used copper speaker wire for its signal wire all the way to ground floor (roughly 25m, copper wire establishes a good signal strength over distance).

At last the testing time, I've tested the system with multiple possiblities and ensured that everything worked as its supposed to. I've also used a 5mm LED for the indication status of the system by which my mom would know the system condition.

As far as things are considered, this project learned me quite a few things on Power wiring, Coding and modularity. The system works flawlessly now and the happiness on mom's face marked my appreciation.

That's it. See you in the next project.