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Advice and help on building sensors!

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Moooey

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Hello people I am a Computer Engineering Major and for my senior design class we are to design a black box for an automated storage device for storm water collection.

For this project there are 3 other students besides me. Two electrical engineer majors and another computer engineer major. For this project we need to meet a budget of 60 dollars and will need one rain sensors and two level sensors.

My question is, Does anyone have any advice or websites on how to design sensors? Especially the rain sensors because the least expensive one I can find is at home depot for about $14.99.

Since I am a CE major my strong point will be programming the microcontroller. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
 
It depends what exactly you want to sense?
If it is raining (yes/no) or measure amount of rainfall?
In first case you could add simple sensor made out of PCB:
 

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Well, if you're looking for a really simple way to develop a level sensor, and I am understanding your definition of "level sensor" as something that will ultimately tell you how much water you have; you can use a potentiometer and a float system to provide a variable resistance output based upon the water level. This system was used in older model fuel tanks for automobiles and light aircraft to provide fuel level readings. Other similar contraptions that use the same float methodology can be viewed in your toilet tank, except this system is purely mechanical, but the idea is the same.

If you decide to go with the PCB system for detecting rain, I suggest placing the sensor at an angle, approximately 30-45 degrees to allow the water to run off of the PCB.
 
The rain sensor would basiclly sense if it is raining or not and the two level sensors will tell the level of water inside the storage device. I found these float switches on ebay for about five bucks:

**broken link removed**

Anyone have any tips on how to actually designing them? It just sucks that the sponsors put a 60 dollar constraint on this project.
 
A simple ultra-sonic rangefinder could be used as a liquid level sensor and can be improvised with few external parts and a pic micro...the circuit and code can be found for free on the web.
 
Please correct me if I am incorrect. :D
It looks like the floats that you included the link to are purely physical, by which I mean, no electronics are involved.
When the float (the large cylinder) falls to a certain point, water is allowed to flow into the tank via the red hose. When the float rises to a certain point, the water flow is cut off.

Here is a link which uses an interesting concept, and you might score some good points for using the logic.
**broken link removed**

Here's another link, which uses less logic and could be used to control a relay or additional logic:
**broken link removed**
 
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