Futurlec?

[Ken]

Anyone successfully ordered stuff from Futurlec?
I've had an order in for well over a month without hearing from them.

Pity.  They have some nice looking cheap water flow meters.  -Thought I'd out one on my garden dripper system to detect a popped fitting.

Ken.

[Kim Hawtin]

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 9:36 AM, Ken <k...@waggies.net> wrote:
> Anyone successfully ordered stuff from Futurlec?

Yes. The Australian one. Don't bother with the US one.

> I've had an order in for well over a month without hearing from them.

I had an order in for about three weeks, I sent them email, they
responded with "we are awaiting stock".
I got them to send everything they had in stock and credit me the
remaining items.

> Pity. They have some nice looking cheap water flow meters. -Thought I'd
> out one on my garden dripper system to detect a popped fitting.

Yes they have lots of interesting stuff.

Email them or call them.

regards,

Kim
--
"Art without engineering is dreaming; engineering without art is
calculating." --SKR

[Ken]

Thanks Kim, it was the Australian website.
Have emailed them.

My aim was to connect one of those serial senders I showed you, to the water flow meter which has a pulse output.
Could have bought one of their LCD sender/receiver units for the flow meter, but didn't.  (They are certainly cheap enough.)

I just hope the flow meter is sustantial enough to not fall to bits on mains pressure.
No drama if the metering fails, but it would be ironic to have the body blow open, when it is there to monitor dripper hose/joiners failure.

My quest to get a Bluetooth connection from my solar invertor and server PC is not going well.
I ran a longer cable across the ceiling to get the Bluetooth dongle closer to the invertor.
On Linux it maps the Bluetooth device as HID.
Running the Sunny Boy software on Windows, it consistently detects the invertor in the search phase, but won't connect to it.
I don't know if the problem is the Bluetooth dongle, or the cat5 USB-extender units on the cable.
(SMA users reporting on the net talk about problems with some Bluetooth dongles.)

These things never seem to be simple.  Sigh.
-A bit like my desire for a USB TV tuner that runs under Linux.  Anyone need a TV tuner that runs fine in Windows, but not Linux?

Regards,
Ken.

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[Tamsyn Michael]

Lol, already got one Ken.  Apparently the newest Kernel has come a long way re: tuner support.

[Ken]

I'm using the current version of Ubuntu.

[Tamsyn Michael]

:( - disappointing.  I read that and got hopeful.

[Ken]

If you are still talking USB TV tuners Tamsyn, I've tried three different ones with Ubuntu.
I'm a bit wary of buying new ones without knowing beforehand that they will work.
The Linux-compatible tuners MSY list, aren't actually in stock (like quite a bit of stuff on MSY's catalogue).

Have any of you Pi users got a USB TV tuner to work???

Ken.

[Kim Hawtin]

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 9:56 AM, Ken <k...@waggies.net> wrote:
> I just hope the flow meter is sustantial enough to not fall to bits on mains
> pressure.
> No drama if the metering fails, but it would be ironic to have the body blow
> open, when it is there to monitor dripper hose/joiners failure.

Well, then I recommend getting a pressure regulator upstream...

cheers,

[Andrew Helgeson]

I've used these
http://www.seeedstudio.com/wiki/index.php?title=G1/2_Water_Flow_sensor
at WAY over mains pressure and they worked really well.
Similar idea you have, checking to see if there was "abnormal" water flow in a turkey barn.

Andrew

[Kim Hawtin]

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 11:46 AM, Andrew Helgeson <cyber...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've used these
> http://www.seeedstudio.com/wiki/index.php?title=G1/2_Water_Flow_sensor
> at WAY over mains pressure and they worked really well.
> Similar idea you have, checking to see if there was "abnormal" water flow in
> a turkey barn.

ah!! finally an example that uses interrupts on arduino for counting
things properly =D hall effect sensors FTW

thanks,

kim

[Ken]

Yeah, that one from Seeed wouldn't be any good for me.  I want to use it with a Picaxe, not an Arduino.  :)
Tempting to power the sender circuit from http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/36v-micro-hydro-generator-pro-p-1280.html?cPath=207
but maybe not.

Ken.

 

[Jamie Mackenzie]

I wonder if you could pull that open and solder a lead directly to the output from the generator (i.e. prior to the regulator).  Would that voltage change with flow rate?  Or does the battery complicate things?

[Ken]

I reckon for most hacker type uses, without the built-in charging circuitry and battery would be preferable.
Especially since they don't say anywhere I could see, what the charging current is (vs flow rate).
Unless you had a constant water flow and low enough discharge current, it would be a bit like cheap solar lights that charge up during the day, then flatten the battery overnight.
Got to admit though, it is an intriguing gadget.

Guessing now, but...
The generator would be a rotating magnet with fixed armature coil.  (Don't need brushes then.)
So the output voltage would be directly proportional to flow rate.

Just sensing voltage without drawing a current, I'd expect the generator to be more lossy with water pressure than the rotating vane in a flow sensor.
-It probably has gears in it, which will lose power for a start (and wear out).

Ken.

[Peter Wintulich]

One option to reduce power consumption is to only apply power to the sensor when you need to read it.
The seeed sensor indicates a maximum of 30Lt / min and 7.5 pulses per Lt. So if a maximum of 450 state changes per min we would only need to wake up every 130ms to read the sensor state and update the count as required. Hall effect sensors switch on relatively fast so you could sleep a lot.

Regards Peter

-- 

Peter Wintulich

Voicetronix Pty. Ltd.
Level 1, 246 Pulteney Street,
ADELAIDE  5000
South Australia
AUSTRALIA
+61 8 8232 9112

[Ken]

I was thinking more along the lines of periodic sampling, say every few seconds.
For my purpose, assuming the circuit isn't informed of when the water is turned on, it could sample once a minute or so, then step up the sample rate when it detects flow, slowing down again when flow stops.
A small battery should power such a system for a long time.
The power drain may be larger from the data transmission part of the system than the flow metering.  So sending a flow rate value wouldn't want to occur too often.

That is where a passive meter is better.  Voltage out of the metering can turn on the micro when the water flow starts.
With a hall-effect device, you have to power it to sense anything.
-One advantage for that micro-generator gadget.  But I wonder just how long its gears would last (assuming it has them).

Ken.
 

-- 

Peter Wintulich

Voicetronix Pty. Ltd.
Level 1, 246 Pulteney Street,
ADELAIDE  5000
South Australia
AUSTRALIA
+61 8 8232 9112

 
 

[Andrew Helgeson]

SeeedStudio also do a "mini-hydro" generator that puts out 7.6V, I was going to use one with a solenoid valve to recharge the battery on the wireless gate system.
We had plenty of 13mm poly and water travels way better than electricity.
Both gates were a few hundred metres from the house/office/barns.

And yes, an XBee "door bell" is overkill but it did let me get continuous XBee coverage across most of the valley with my rover.

Andrew

[Ryan Leach]

it's just an example, it doesn't mean you have to follow it. its not like theres some super secret Arduino only DRM on it.

[Ken]

You didn't see the :) on the end of that line, Ryan?
Maybe I should have made it a ;)

Ken.

[Damien P]

On Thursday, February 21, 2013 9:36:33 AM UTC+10:30, Ken wrote:

Anyone successfully ordered stuff from Futurlec?

A while ago.  I found they don't tell you if there's something not in stock.  I emailed them and got them to cancel what they don't have, and it came in about 3 weeks.  I'd doubt that it makes any difference whether you order it on the .com.au site or the .com - I think they both come from Thailand anyway.

[Ken]

Funny you should say that.
I get a reply to my email asking where my order is.
I'd ordered a couple of multimeters along with a few other things.
Turns out they can't supply the multimeters!!!
So instead of telling me, they just let the order sit there.

They've offered me an alternative multimeter.  So hopefully I will get all the bits sometime soon.  (ha)

Ken.

--