Good day folks. Some of you may recall that a while ago I was struggling to put together what I considered to be a very basic automation for a water supply system. It didn't work out the way I intended and I learned my lesson to do it properly from the start, rather than try to reinvent the wheel and patch something together myself from scratch, so I'll stick to commercial alternatives for future projects and such a project just came in today !
This one is easier simply because this time the pump and level sensors are in the same place, so they don't require a remote connection. The client DOES require remote control and monitoring though. I'll let the doodle speak for itself, instead of trying to describe it too much: two separate tanks, one pump for both, 2 valves, 2 float switches - make sense ?
Not wanting to DIY it and fail again, I began searching for OTS solutions, which brings me to the actual topic: I'd appreciate suggestions from people who happen to work in the field and/or have more experience with industrial automation than I do
Several things I thought of:
- some sort of PLC (Siemens, Schneider). The most professional approach, but also the most pricey and requires the most work, because I'd need to come up with some sort of web server, which is the the hardest bit. I HAVE played with PLCs before at a very basic level, but never with more advanced features like control over ethernet.
-a GPRS/4G solution like a gate opener: easiest to implement out of the box, plus it only requires a SIM card to get it online. Not the most visually appealing to use - no GUI: the most it can do is return SMS messages when the status of the floats flips and the pump turns on/off. Many of these don't have more than 2-3 outputs, which is a bit close for comfort and leaves no room for further expansion. They may also not support any IF-THEN functions, so I may not be able to map input 1 to outputs 1 AND 2 simultaneously...
-Shelly Pro 4PM: this one almost won, but not quite. Cheap, app is ready to go out of the box, has 4 inputs and 4 outputs, has ethernet, is DIN-rail compatible. What killed it is that, according to the manual, there's no isolation. The inputs are referenced to the "hot" wire - no low voltage control - so I'd have to pass 230v through the float sensors underwater and in humid environment ??? Yikes ! I WAS thinking of taking it apart and getting it down to the bare-minimum, which I'm sure is like a transistor/optocoupler+resistor divider jobbie, dropping the 230v to pull the respective pins of the microcontroller low/high, but that's not 100% guaranteed....
Any more ideas ? Thanks.
This one is easier simply because this time the pump and level sensors are in the same place, so they don't require a remote connection. The client DOES require remote control and monitoring though. I'll let the doodle speak for itself, instead of trying to describe it too much: two separate tanks, one pump for both, 2 valves, 2 float switches - make sense ?
Not wanting to DIY it and fail again, I began searching for OTS solutions, which brings me to the actual topic: I'd appreciate suggestions from people who happen to work in the field and/or have more experience with industrial automation than I do
Several things I thought of:
- some sort of PLC (Siemens, Schneider). The most professional approach, but also the most pricey and requires the most work, because I'd need to come up with some sort of web server, which is the the hardest bit. I HAVE played with PLCs before at a very basic level, but never with more advanced features like control over ethernet.
-a GPRS/4G solution like a gate opener: easiest to implement out of the box, plus it only requires a SIM card to get it online. Not the most visually appealing to use - no GUI: the most it can do is return SMS messages when the status of the floats flips and the pump turns on/off. Many of these don't have more than 2-3 outputs, which is a bit close for comfort and leaves no room for further expansion. They may also not support any IF-THEN functions, so I may not be able to map input 1 to outputs 1 AND 2 simultaneously...
-Shelly Pro 4PM: this one almost won, but not quite. Cheap, app is ready to go out of the box, has 4 inputs and 4 outputs, has ethernet, is DIN-rail compatible. What killed it is that, according to the manual, there's no isolation. The inputs are referenced to the "hot" wire - no low voltage control - so I'd have to pass 230v through the float sensors underwater and in humid environment ??? Yikes ! I WAS thinking of taking it apart and getting it down to the bare-minimum, which I'm sure is like a transistor/optocoupler+resistor divider jobbie, dropping the 230v to pull the respective pins of the microcontroller low/high, but that's not 100% guaranteed....
Any more ideas ? Thanks.
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