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Have you managed to find out if either input terminal of your TriggerLinc connects to battery plus or minus?
Smoke detectors go on top. Leak detectors go on the bottom. Would not one at the low point be enough?
hi Mark,
In your previous posts you have only referred to one device a 'dish washer', not the full house.
A security system is to prevent burglaries, a leak detector 'battery failure detector' will not prevent leaks, so I think your comparison is unfair.
Have you already had water leakage problems.??
No. Dishwasher is in the kitchen, Washer and dryer are in laundry room.
I'm not talking about leak prevention. I'm talking about leak detection to notify me about leaking.
We had slowly leaking dishwasher that damaged our kitchens wall and floor. The leak was small (dripping) and water went towards the wall and eventually started to penetrate into the wooden underlying floor.
We did not see the leak, and discovered it only because of a smell from that area. We fixed the dishwasher and after that I decided to install TriggerLinc sensors to monitor for leakage not only under dishwasher,
but also under cloths washing and drying machines and in the bathrooms under the sink (inside cabinet).
In that case I dont think I would have gone with a battery powered sensor setup. What if the battery decides to give out will you are gone?
Are your smoke detectors battery powered as well?
In a commercial system these would be powered buy a battery backed up power supply.
Thats all good and I hope you have fun doing it.
As long as you realize it's not foolproof.
How long does the battery last?
Maybe you would want to consiter a bigger external battery like a "c" cell.
Those Lithium AA batteries will be 3v surely . . .
1) Not easy to calculate because of variations in transistor Vbe. Trip point depends on R1 and R3. Simulation shows that, with the values given, Q2 begins to turn on when battery voltage drops to 1V. Increasing R1 (or reducing R3) increases the turn-on trip voltage.
2) I don't know, because the internal circuit of the TriggerLinc (TL) is unknown. My circuit will only work if one of the TL sensor terminals is connected internally to TL battery negative (-). It needs three connections :- (i) from Bat to the TL battery positive (+), (ii) from Ground to - , and (iii) from Out to the TL sensor terminal which is NOT connected directly to + or -.
Using a multimeter, can you detect if either of the TL sensor terminals is directly connected to TL battery + or - (I would expect it to be connected to one or the other. If it's connected to + then we can modify the circuit to cope.)?
Good luck. Keep us posted. Just hope the TriggerLinc can actually send a signal when its battery is down to 1V
I'm sure a friend or neighbour would oblige with a dead batteryMay be I need to 'kill' a few AA batteries for tests...
Generally that's ok, but not sure if using a diode would give similar results to a real dying battery in this particular application. A 'good' 1.5V cell + Si diode would give a 'good' 0.8V source capable of driving considerable current, whereas a dying cell may go increasingly high resistance and be unable to drive much current. For that reason my suggested circuit may not work with the TriggerLinc as the OP hopes .
We'll soon know.
It's tiny; about 8 microamps in the idle state according to the simulation in LTSpice. Once tripped it draws about 80 microamps.My only concern is amount of current that this circuit draws when in idle.
Good work guys!O.K. ! Today I finally built and tested the circuit. And it works !
Thank you alec_t for the circuit and your help !