jrz126

My dad just bought another aquarium, (e had some leaking problems with the old one) and now we have new carpet in the room. He's alittle paranoid about this one leaking, so he would like me to design an alarm for if the water level drops below a certain level.

A very simple project, and alittle too simple for me...So i was thinking, what if I somehow wire up the floatswitch to the PC (parallel port or something), so that when the alarm trips, the computer will then send a text message to his cellphone. With cellular one, you just send an email to (phonenumber)@cellone.com or something like that and it will send that person a textmessage. There will still be a buzzer attached, but this is just in case no one is home to hear it.

Now one of the major problems I see right now is that what if the PC is off.

I'm sure I can figure this out on my own, but I just wanted to make sure that there wasnt an easier way.

Gimme your thoughts

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Jeff Zimmerman
To the optimist, the glass is half full.
To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

Someone Electro

Wodnt it be more simple to put an plate under the aquarium.So if it starts leaking,the water wod be colected on the plate.There wod also be a hose that leds to an water bottle that coletes the leaked water.You so then simply put the botler on a switch so wen it gets heavyer becose of the water filing it the switch wod click soundidng an alarm.So its aculy an 2 in one solution(It s an alarm that also colects the leaking water.)

So in case no one realy is home the water wod be colected until someone gets home.

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jrz126

when the first aquarium started leaking, there was enough force that the water actually sprayed out and landed 2 or 3 feet away. So I dont think I could get the water to land in a tray.

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Jeff Zimmerman
To the optimist, the glass is half full.
To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

Someone Electro

Then wen it starts leaking its too late anyway.

Then use an second a litle biger aquarim to catch the water.

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Dr.EM

Yes, that sounds best, like a ship with 2 hulls. This is an interesting project idea, but it does seem likely that by the time its sprung a leak, it is rather too late unless you actually were in the house at the time.

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Will have to make do with myspace now I guess...

Electrix

Ok this is my suggestion: Redirect the water from where it came from..make a sort of a tank that collects the water and then with a motor, pump the water into the tank backitself. You could attach a filter somewhere midway. I think this is a better alternative to rushing back home when you receive an altert on your cell phone :wink:

Joel Rainville

Buy a better aquarium? :P

Is it huge? There's a sizeable aquarium in my basement that's 36"x18"x12". It must be at least 10 years old. I can't see how it could leak. I wish it would, I'd have a good reason to get rid of it. I just hate the thing! Is your dad's much bigger?

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jrz126

Our old aquarium had 5 sides (kinda like a square with one of the corners cut off), 55 gallons. It sprung a leak where the glass is seamed together with glue. It was a very small leak, probably about a gallon per hour if that.
No matter what there is going to be water on the floor...
When it started leaking the first time, I noticed it about an hour or so later.
but if it started leaking at say 11 pm when everyone was in bed, there would be about 8-10 gallons on the floor before anyone would wake up.
Whereas with the alarm, there would be alot less water on the floor.

The new one is a bowfront aquairum, not sure on the gallons....hopefully it wont leak, but I'd like to have the alarm just to be safe.

So is there an easier way to send the textmessage?

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Jeff Zimmerman
To the optimist, the glass is half full.
To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

Joel Rainville

A friend of mine implemented that once, but it involves programming on the PC, and interfacing to your cell phone provider website's text messaging service...

Your alarm would simply trigger your program on the PC via the COM/LPT port, which in turn sends an HTTP form to your cell phone provider, which forwards the text message to your cell.

Pretty simple if you know your way around the HTTP protocol.

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Time is nature\'s way of keeping everything from happening at once.
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Joel Rainville

Man do I need to start reading posts in their entirety ops: You already have a way of sending SMS text messages...

What's bugging you with that solution? The PC being off? Don't power it off then. I never ever shutdown my PC, unless it's for a quick reboot. There's usually no reason to do so anyway. Just make sure your monitor shuts off after a certain period of inactivity.

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bryan1

Hiya Jeff,
Last year siliconchip did a project based on sms. Jaycar have the kit for $49.50 Oz $$$$'s The kit number is KC5400. If you go to www.jaycar.com.au and put in that part number it will take you to the kit or if you like I can scan the article and e-mail it to you.

Cheers Bryan

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Electrix

There is a way to do this stuff in Visual Basic..pretty much like scanning a port..the interrupt from your microcontroller would trigger the port..VB them contacts the SMTP server (Google could work) to send you an automatic e-mail/sms. I got this info from one of the comp sci students at college.

Joel Rainville

You can do that with basically any programming language available on the PC, Linux or Windows... There isn't much to it.

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Time is nature\'s way of keeping everything from happening at once.
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