Propane tank

[Felix]

I think so, you would just need to make some adjustments to the watermote sketch to make it battery friendly (ie add sleep code for everything) and only take measurements maybe once per day as Tom suggested.
And you'd need to tweak the position of the reflective sensor on the dial so that it sits against the white background. I would think somewhere between 20 and 25 in your dial should work.

[Kilo95]

Awesome.

[Lensdigital]

What temperatures do you have?  A lithium primary would get you to -40C (coincidentally -40F)...

Tom

In my experience (over a year of ongoing tests) cold kills ANY battery faster than your device will drain it.  I have sensors running on 3V lithum cell for 7 months (transmitting temperature/humidity and voltage every 5 minutes), and then they die when it's below -10F in less than 30 days.

[Felix]

Yes I think that should work and its a pretty cheap attempt.

[Kilo95]

On the eesy310...connecting it to the moteino...red to the 3.3v on the moteino, black to ground, and where does the white go? Where's te easiest place to get the three wire jumper you used in the watermote setup to connect it to the moteino? where's the best place to put the sleep code so everything is covered?

[Felix]

Depends on what you want to do with that signal. It will flip state when it crosses colors. Just connect it to a digital pin, then check when it changes state, send your packet, etc.
If you want to use it like a pulse counter with my WaterMote sketch then connect it to D3 which is a hardware interrupt pin which is expected to flip very very fast and needs an interrupt to count the pulses.

[Kilo95]

Ok. Great. D3 it is. how do I adjust the sleep one so it only checks once a day

[luisr320]

I think that the Watermote reads the cyclic passage of a needle in front of the sensor and counts how many times something happened. That is not your case, as far as I can see. What you need is either a small Wifi camera pointing to the needle or measuring the weight of the tank and sending it wirelessly to another Moteino to display it on some sort of LCD. I would go for the weight sensor, since it is a trivial mater for a Moteino to do all that.

[Kilo95]

It's a 500gal tank. Plus 400gal of propane. I wouldn't be able to get it under there. Also I think that's over the weight limit for most of the scales I saw. Thanks though

[luisr320]

You could build a platform with several sensors to distribute the load and set the tank on top of it, then average and sum their readings.
The simplest solutions are always the best choice.
http://www.wikihow.com/Measure-the-Remaining-Propane
I don't see how you can read the needle position if it moves slowly along a scale.

[Kilo95]

It'll just let me know when it gets down to 20-25%. That's good enough for me😁

[Felix]

You can sleep 8s at a time. See my sketches.
Do the math for 24h, gives you the ~ # of cycles.

[Kilo95]

i got that added.  copied from sonarmote sketch. so with the watermote sketch, what kind of readout will i get on the gateway? nothing until it gets down to 20%, then it'll give me a reading in gallons? i'm trying to figure out how to be either a off or on. (>20% or alert at 20%). any suggestions?

[Felix]

No, the gallons thing is where there is a pulse. You have no pulse or anything like that. When your dial indicator gets to 20% it will obstruct the sensor and the sensor will simply go LOW (or HIGH... I cant remember now). Then you know it reached 20%. Then you send your message.
I guess you could install several of these sensors at various points on the dial. Like 20%, 40% 60% 80%. Then you can use digital pins to power them for low power, (dont use VCC or it will drain your battery fast, they are IR LEDs basically). Then power each once a day, read the status and report the last known status until you reach 20% or the lowest, at which point you can setup an alert. Many ways to do that ... you got tons of example sketches and metrics to follow. A bit of javascript and c++ practice can't hurt anyone

[luisr320]

Looking at your dial I noticed that it says "REMOTE READY" on the black tag. A simple google turned this out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeCplibHX_8

If you notice in the video, there is a specific sensor built for that meter. Here are some examples: http://www.tekelekgroup.com/en/tank-monitoring-systems/lpg-gas-sensors/lpg-propane-sensor.html
http://www.rochestergauges.com/products/R3D.html

That last one has description on how to connect a hall sensor.

You can try to place a hall sensor in the socket and connect it to the Moteino.