Fuel level sending units install

[Brenton Piercy]

RickH, in his infinite wisdom, picked up a set of KUS fluid level sending units to make a nice fuel gauge setup for Perla. Unfortunately, he didn't get to installing them before he sold Perla to me but I'm excited to use this as a fun first project on the boat. 

Progress so far: got the sensors, gauge, and switch all laid out to take an inventory for the project. Looks like I've got two different length sensors which makes sense due to the geometries of the tanks. I've even got a nice writeup from Rick detailing out his intentions. He's a meticulous man if you didn't notice already. 

My plan is to fabricate up two new tank access plates and install the sending units next to the original dipsticks as it's always nice to have the backups. Took a bunch of measurements and CAD'd up the covers along with the bung on the original covers for the dipstick. The dipsticks have a kooky 9/16-12 thread and a counterbore for an o-ring seal which is easy enough to keep around. 

I mocked up one out of carbon steel I had laying around and will be using it to verify that everything fits and works. Then the plan is to either buy some stainless to make a set or shop it out to one of my local stainless fab shops. I'll keep you all posted as the install comes along. 

[Jeremy Dinsel]

Can you let us know how you plan to integrate this with any gauges? Will you be adding something that translates the levels into data sent out on an NMEA 2000 network?

I'm very interested in doing the same for the fuel tanks as well as for the water tanks.

-j

[Brenton Piercy]

My plan was to design up and make a few analog to NMEA 2000 translators that would have dip switches to allow me to select the type of fluid and what number of tank it was. Turns out you can find them on Aliexpress for like $50/ea. So I've got a few of those on order. This will allow me to see it all on the chart plotter or in my openPlotter setup. I'll keep you posted on how they work out. One bummer is that the previous owner set up this slick Simrad / Simnet system which has those proprietary connectors that I now have to get adapters for. 

I don't know why I hadn't thought of doing this to the water and holding tank. Those are definitely next if this works out. 

[Brenton Piercy]

Here's a quick video from the benchtop showing how the fuel level sending units will get onto the NMEA2000 network and into the chartplotter. Planning to install it all in this weekend. Will post more when we get to that point. 

https://youtu.be/_-cga4UIGmo

[Matthew Davidson]

Good Stuff here!

I chatted with Brenton

Looks like he has a good solution here and by installing a toggle switch you can maintain use of the Remote Analog Indicators as backup but, cannot operate both NMEA2000 and Analog indicators at the same time… which is just fine. Just need to toggle1 to either local analog indicator or toggle2 to NMEA2000 for Chart Plotter indication while at the helm.

 

Matthew A Davidson - President 

ANTEC CORPORATION 

Box 1609, North Bend, WA 98045

Mat...@AntecCorporation.com

C: 206-660-1311, O: 425-888-9090

my backup is Stacey Volkman - sup...@anteccorporation.com

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[Brenton Piercy]

Yeah. I'll do a quick test of that when I've got the standalone gauge display. Currently it's at the boat and not on the bench. If it turns out to be necessary for a switch (likely) I'll do a quick video showing that version. 

[Brenton Piercy]

Ok. Did a quick install on the boat to see how it works. Looks like it's all reading in properly. Will just have to get the chartplotter set to show the right gallon or liter volumes. I didn't get to test with a separate gauge/display but would say that the switch will be important for that to function properly. For me I'll just keep the dipsticks I have around for a backup.

https://youtu.be/xdr2I001kZU

[Jeremy Dinsel]

Thanks for the video!

I'm also interested in the floor you added into the space under the cockpit (we call it the "rabbit hole"). What's under this flooring? Is it just there to provide a level space off of the fiberglass or some other function?

-j

[Brenton Piercy]

The starting battery is under that floor. It does make working in the rabbit hole and stowing the code zero and other sails in that area much easier. 

[Matthew Davidson]

We call it the cave

Matthew A Davidson-president 

ANTEC CORPORATION 

PO Box 1609

North Bend WA 98045

Cell: 206-660-1311

mat...@anteccorporation.com

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From: passpor...@googlegroups.com <passpor...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Brenton Piercy <bpthein...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, July 1, 2022 9:59:45 AM
To: Passport Owners <Passpor...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [Passport] Re: Fuel level sending units install

 

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[Jeremy Dinsel]

We were able to get two 230Ah Victron AGM batteries and our starter to fit under the stairs. But the idea of adding a third is compelling and moving the starter somewhere. I used the space inside the door for our negative ground bus, shunt, and circuit breakers for the battery charger wires. 

-j

On Jul 1, 2022, at 10:33, Matthew Davidson <mat...@anteccorporation.com> wrote:



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[Brenton Piercy]

Alrighty. 

So this has snowballed into a fun project getting data for the different systems on the boat. Rick had done a great job of building up a great set of Simrad equipment on Perla so tons of things were already on the N2k network. While being able to see all of that data on the chart plotter was great I wanted to take things a few steps further. 

So here's what I've done so far. 

1) Installed those KUS style float sensors on both diesel tanks and both freshwater tanks. I've got CAD for these if anyone needs wants to do a similar mount. I'd suggest going to sendcutsend.com and uploading the file so they can cut you a new stainless tank lid. Surprisingly not that expensive.

2) Bought a few analog resistor tank sensor to N2k adapters (aliexpress special). These things take those KUS style sensors and put them on the N2k bus. They're around $40/ea and I ended up needing 2. One is for the port side diesel tank level and the other for the port side freshwater tank. Video in previous posts here that detail that out. 

3) Bought an N2k adapter that can read in things like engine tach, coolant temp, 1 diesel tank level, 1 freshwater tank level, and a few alarms like overtemp, oil pressure, etc. This thing is like $110 or so. There are a few different versions. I think there are versions that actually would've worked better than mine but I'm making it work. Very Similar to this

 

4) Built up a Raspberry Pi 4+ with a PiCAN-M hat with OpenCPN installed so I can have a little computer at the nav station that can read all the data in. This build was relatively easy. 

5) Printed out a bezel and housing for the little computer. Again, CAD files somewhere for this if anyone is keen to print up a set of their own. I'm thinking of putting them on my site for the broader boating community to purchase. 

6) gone back and forth a dozen times about the best cabling techniques. Adapting simnet to normal n2k (micro-c connectors) is not a cheap affair. 

7) Recently installed InfluxDB and Grafana on the little computer to allow me to see data over time and not just a snapshot of what's currently happening. 

Now here it is doing what it does. The mouse and keyboard allow me to really cruise through it. I can pull up charts, set waypoints, record tracks, record weather data, see all the AIS stuff, etc. It's pretty rad. 

Here it is showing the tides via my depth sounder over a 24hr period. 

I've also made a dashboard to see tank levels. They're in a percent scale now but I should be able to get them to show gallons or liters soon. 

Some things I still need to finish up. 

1) The engine instrumentation. I still have the Beta dash in the cockpit but I'd like to also have it go to the N2k adapter I've got. This will allow me to see things from the chartplotter in the cockpit and this screen down below. 

2) I want to do a little rearranging of the connectors to ensure that the N2k bus is wired truly properly. It's not hard to "make it work" but to get it to be proper spec where I don't have to worry about reflections and all that is somewhat important to me. 

3) Work on a way to get that data home for longer term storage. Right now it keeps all the data locally for like 2wks or a month (configurable). I'd like to have it over a longer period of time. 

4) Figure out a way to toggle between dashboards super easily via the touchscreen. 

5) get the font to not be ultra tiny. The details. 

Anyway, I hope y'all like it. I'm super pleased with how it's turning out. Now time to sail some more and really collect some fun data. 

[Kenyon Stewart]

Hey Brenton,

Looks like a good plan.  I've looked at all kinds of different options on our Passport47 and still am undecided on which way I'm going to go.  We have 8 tanks on Outbound, 3 fuel, 3 fresh water, 2 holding, so it gets expensive pretty quickly.  Doesn't seem like these tank adapters have any type of calibration.  Are you planning on handling that somewhere else?  A number of our tanks are very wedge shaped, so a linear scale wouldn't be very useful.

Kenyon

S/V Outbound

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[Brenton Piercy]

So for doing a LOT of tanks you could incorporate something more along the lines of that engine data device. That thing gives you at least 2 fuel, 2 freshwater, and I think also a holding tank. Those are around $120 for the analog to N2k part. You'd need the level sensors which are around $30/ea from overseas. To do the non-linear scaling you could certainly set that up in grafana. I haven't done it just yet but will be doing that soon to deal with the fact that the sensor on one of my tanks is not the perfect length and I want to also get things into gallons instead of percentages.