Sump pump alert with Moteino & HC-SR04

UPDATE: This project has been replaced/updated with SonarMote. See this blog post for a more rencent implementation of what you see here. The alerts are now implemented as simple events on the Moteino Gateway.

Here’s another project I wanted to do for a long time. I wanted a sump pump flood warning alert system in place, for peace of mind when I’m gone from home for prolonged periods. For whatever reason I thought this was going to be more difficult but no, it’s almost as easy as pie!

All I needed was a HC-SR04 sonar sensor and a USB 5V wall supply. The sensor only works at 5V so this method of powering the Moteino was very convenient since I already have an outlet close by for the sump pump.

The sensor has 4 pins clearly marked: VCC, GND, TRIG and ECHO. I connected VCC to VIN on Moteino, ECHO goes to D3 and TRIG to D4.

Moteino_HC-SR04_SumpPumpAlert

I used some of the code this instructable to get started and added my wireless code to handle packets and blink the LED and was done in no time. The setup was very simple, I estimated a good spot underneath the sump pump cover where there are no obstructions inside, cleaned it up, taped some velcro, secured the wires and that was pretty much it.

 Moteino_HC-SR04_SumpPumpAlert_cover Moteino_HC-SR04_SumpPumpAlert_installed

I added a few lines of code to my main Python script running on the RaspberryPi.
By the way, here’s how my RaspberryPi setup looks like, including the ATXRaspi power controller, the power button and the gateway Moteino (it’s an older R1 but just as good for as a gateway):

Moteino_RaspberryPi_ATXRaspi_PowerButton

The Python script logs the data to EmonCMS and here’s a graph of how that looks like, the Moteino reports the distance to the water surface, so the spikes means the sump pump just kicked ON, and as water rises the distance decreases until the pump starts again:

EmonCMS_SumpPump

It’s been a rainy spring so far here and I knew my pump kicks ON quite often, now I can see it in real time, and setup alerts if the water rises too much. Seems like the pump is always pumping water out when it rises to 32cm below basement surface. So setting an alert to something like 20cm below surface should be enough since I don’t expect the water to ever rise so much as long as the pump works. The alert code will send me a SMS message when this happens, here’s a test level, I set the live value at 20cm:

Moteino_HC-SR04_SumpPumpAlert_SMS

You can of course setup other types of alerts – like audio alerts or maybe a LED visual indicator (less useful when you’re not in your basement).

Fun/Scary fact: The sensor is very accurate even though there’s a variance of 1cm between some readings (resulting in a sawtooth graph) as water rises. Based on the graphs, how often the water is pumped (every ~23 minutes), and how big the reservoir is, I figured my sump pump removes roughly about 18.5 liters every cycle, or about 1158 liters (306 gal) every day, wow!

So now there’s an extra level of peace of mind when I leave on vacation. I guess being gone for even 1 day could mean disaster if the sump pump breaks down at the same time!

Time to think about how to gather/store all that water instead of throwing it away, after all, I pay something like $11 for every 1000 gallons of city water.

Source code is on GitHub: https://github.com/LowPowerLab/SumpPumpAlert

Moteino wireless programming source code

I managed to put together a library and refactor the code that I used to achieve Moteino wireless programming.

There’s a new WirelessHEX file in the SPIFlash library. There are new WirelessHEX classes for RFM12B and RFM69W/HW transceivers. These files contain helper code that handles the new sketch over-the-air transmission for both the transmitting and receiving ends. It will increase your sketch size by a few KB, that is just an unavoidable tradeoff.

The target node that is to be wirelessly reprogrammed will need to have code to listen for a potential new sketch. I uploaded the example sketch along with everything else to the RFM12B library examples.

The gateway node sketch, target node sketch, python script that passes the HEX file to gateway node are all located here: 

https://github.com/LowPowerLab/WirelessProgramming

The custom DualOptiboot bootloader allowing the reflashing with the sketch stored on the external SPI FLASH memory chip is here: https://github.com/LowPowerLab/DualOptiboot
I managed to keep the size just under 1k. So in the future Moteinos will probably ship All Moteinos (R2 and R3) are now shipping with this bootloader to allow for potential wireless reprogramming if you also have the FLASH chip onboard the target mote.

I would call this an alpha release even though it works pretty well. Sometimes it’s a hit or miss because of the delays I’ve set in python. Those could be refactored and code improved to be smarter about initial requests for a sketch transmission. But it seems in most cases it works the first try.

Further improvements are:

  • increase speed of transmission
  • test with larger sketches
  • refactor python script, WirelessHEX library and gateway/target node sketches

I’ll try to keep up with changes and updates. Right now I have no idea if anyone will find this useful or not.

Wireless programming step 1: SUCCESS!

UPDATE: See Step 2 for actual results.

Well, the title may sound somewhat misleading. But read on. After many days/hours of trial and error I was finally able to validate and transmit an intel HEX flash image to a remote Moteino, which stores it on an external SPI flash chip (soldered to the new SPI Flash footprint available on all Moteino R2s). This is the first step towards wireless programming, and probably the easier step.

Moteino_R2_withFlash

I really hate to write bits and pieces of an unfinished solution and keep the readers in suspense/anticipation of what’s coming next (I see there’s a trend for this on some blogs, to increase blog hits and keep users “hooked”), but I think the wireless programming endeavor is rather long and complicated. Yesterday I achieved what I long wanted, to get a new sketch wirelessly transmitted and stored on a remote Moteino, for later interception and reprogramming through a custom bootloader.

For those unfamiliar with a HEX file, it’s the file generated by your Arduino sketch, and then uploaded to your Arduino/Moteino when you click “Upload”. It all happens behind the scenes and through the attached FTDI adapter. It’s a complex protocol that involves a handful of moving parts. The most important is the bootloader which lives on your Arduino/Moteino, which must be able to intercept the “Hey here’s a new program for you!” request and start re-programming the internal flash memory. But for all this you need wires!

Wireless programming of your Arduino/Moteino is useful when you have nodes sitting in trees, on top of your house, in your attic, underwater, underground, inside sealed enclosures, generally where it’s very hard to physically reach once you have a node deployed.

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