Continue to Site

Welcome to our site!

Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

  • Welcome to our site! Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

How to build a circuit - LED to illuminate when Rule pump is on

Status
Not open for further replies.

badvgood

New Member
Hi all,

Newbie here so basic instructions only please!

I am installing a Rule bilge pump in a jetski to remove any water that gets in the hull.

You cannot see the water coming out of the pipework so I want a tel-tail LED on the dash so I know when it is running.

The pump itself is an automatic pump, it starts to run every 2 minutes, if no resistance is felt by the pump it shuts off within a second or two. If it feels a resistance (caused by water on the impeller) it keeps on running until the resistance is removed - IE the water is gone.

This is the pump in question - https://store.waterpumpsupply.com/ruau12vodcbi1.html

How do I build a simple circuit that will illuminate a LED on the dash when the pump is running?

Thanks in advance.

BVG
 
Are you using an Auto/Man switch?

From the manual;

"5. NOTE-When using two wire installation, eliminating the manual override option, the 3rd wire (Brown/White) must be sealed and secured high above the bilge water."

I think if you hook up a 12 volt LED hot side to the Brown/White wire from the pump and ground the other side it should turn on when the Auto feature turns the pump on.
 
Last edited:
You have a pump that runs around 12 to 13.6 volts DC off the electrical system. You could likely hack the pump to get to the actual pump power (actual power to the pump motor) beyond the water sensing. Place a LED with a resistor in series across the actual pump motor power. The LED and resistor are your choice or just buy a 12 volt automotive LED designed for a 12 to 13.6 volt automotive system and place it (observing polarity) across the pump motor. That should work and a 12 volt LED can likely be had at a local Radio Shack.

Edit: 4Pyros beat me by a min with a great suggestion. :)

Ron
 
Last edited:
You have a pump that runs around 12 to 13.6 volts DC off the electrical system. You could likely hack the pump to get to the actual pump power (actual power to the pump motor) beyond the water sensing. Place a LED with a resistor in series across the actual pump motor power. The LED and resistor are your choice or just buy a 12 volt automotive LED designed for a 12 to 13.6 volt automotive system and place it (observing polarity) across the pump motor. That should work and a 12 volt LED can likely be had at a local Radio Shack.

Edit: 4Pyros beat me by a min with a great suggestion. :)

Ron

Ron; The pump is sealed and should not be opened.
 
My other thought was to power a LED off two diodes put in series with the pump but that would drop the supply voltage to the pump by 1.4 volts.
 
Ron; The pump is sealed and should not be opened.

Knew I should have read more into this. :(

Thanks for pointing that out to me. My bad, I knew it could not be that simple.

Ron
 
I would not rely on a 'pump energized' indicator, but on a 'water flowing' indicator.
If the pump outlet is properly tapped/derived to force some flow to an aquarium hose and to a dripper at your panel, and then drained on larger hose; it would provide a better certainty of what is going on.

The item pictured, by your dash :

**broken link removed**

Never knew how is it called...
 
Last edited:
A current draw sensor using a small resistor in series with the supply and a transistor to switch on the led ought to do the trick.
Better still a dc current 'transformer', or should I say detector, bt I've never used one of them.

You can also get 'dolls eye' low pressure pneumatic indicators, you might be able to pipe one of these up to the o/p of the pump with a t piece.
 
Last edited:
A simple solution may be to put a small value resistor 0.5 ohms in series with the power leads to the pump and simply place an LED across the 0.5 ohm resistor (observing proper polarity for the LED). Since the PUMP will only draw current when it is operating, the current flow through the resistor will produce enough IR voltage to forward bias the LED. The specs for the pump indicate a current value between 3.3 and 5 Amps which would produce from 1.65 to 2.5 volts across the resistor. You may have to add a small resistor in series with the LED, but since the pump only runs intermittantly this shouldn't be necessary.
 
I'd base it on a hall effect current sensor such as the ACS712 https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/ACS712ELCTR-05B-T/620-1189-2-ND/1284593

You will also need a 5V regulator. To ave power this should be a switching regulator. Sparkfun, Digikey and even ebay have such regulators that will accept a wide range DC voltage and create 5V. e.g. **broken link removed**

Now you could do two things. I'd then use a voltage reference, buffer it and divide it and possibly buffer again to get the testing and pumping thresholds.

This info could be applied to a 3 wire bipolar LED or two lights.
Pumping water would basically turn out to be the color yellow for the easiest circuit.
Green (Preferred) or RED could be Checking for water.

You would have to play some games to get the colors RED for pumping and Green for ON and Yellow for checking or any combination of two or three colors (RED, GREEN, YELLOW) Red is one LED, Green is the other, Yellow is both on
It's nonetheless possible. Using Yellow for ON consumes power.

I just don't have the time to do a design. alec (not his handle) on this forum likes to do designs.

What would happen is that you would have two thresholds.
Checking
Pumping
For pumping I will be greater than the pumping threshold and the checking threshold.
For checking, it will be above the checking threshold.

Some LOGIC can probably create 2 signals from 3 inputs (power on, over checking threshold, over pumping and checking threshold) and create 2 outputs to drive, Green and Red.

A very simple way of doing the logic is to use two 3-input dataselector IC.

Not a real easy project, but very straightforward. I'll PM alec.
 
Wow you guys have gone over board today:D
Its a bilge pump indicator light on a jetski.
Not rocket science.:eek:
I think I had it covered in the 1st few posts.
No reply from OP to say any different.
But we are getting some nice ideas.
 
Last edited:
wrap the feed or return wire around a reed switch several times and use that switch to turn on your LED
 
Volvo used to use a reed switch for detecting a blown bulb, the feed to one bulb went round the reed one way, and the feed to the other bulb went round the reed the other way, in normal circumstances the 2 cancelled and the switch was off, one out and the switch closed bringing on the blown bulb reminder.
Good idea that and it doesnt need to infringe the wiring to the pump or drop its voltage.
 
Do you have the pump already?

"NOTE-When using two wire installation, eliminating the manual override option, the 3rd wire (Brown/White) must be sealed and secured high above the bilge water."
Sounds like the Brown/White wire will be energized when the automatic switch turns on.
Could do a quick check, wire the brown and black to a battery, then measure the voltage on the brown/white when the pump kicks on.
 
Wow, thanks all for the input. I am really grateful.

I will but the pump and try / experiment with some of the above ideas on how to do it.

I have seen the pump on ebay and in the listing it states the third wire being used for a tell tail light.

**broken link removed**

Once again, thanks all, I will be back!
 
Do you have the pump already?

"NOTE-When using two wire installation, eliminating the manual override option, the 3rd wire (Brown/White) must be sealed and secured high above the bilge water."
Sounds like the Brown/White wire will be energized when the automatic switch turns on.
Could do a quick check, wire the brown and black to a battery, then measure the voltage on the brown/white when the pump kicks on.

Same as my post:D
Post #2
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest threads

New Articles From Microcontroller Tips

Back
Top