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Year-round Solar Water Temperature Sensor (imgur.com)

submitted 1 year ago by kaedon to c/diy

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A small solar power system to run a LoRa water temperature sensor year round. Here's some pretty graphs of the data:

https://www.kaedon.net/mitigomish/watertemp

This is a project that's been running for almost 2 years now. Everything is still working with very little down time! The solar power system is way overpowered for what it's doing, but I wanted to make sure it works through the dark winters.

The temperature sensor is at the bottom of a bucket in the ground, because the water level gets pretty low in the winter and I didn't want the ice to destroy the temperature sensor when it drifts.

Any thoughts or suggestions for improvements are welcome!

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[–] cybermatrix 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do you by any chance mean this type of valve? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wax_thermostatic_element I must agree, it is quite ingeniously thought of

[–] CadeJohnson 2 points 1 year ago

I am not sure if that is the same; the assembly on the solar panel was larger diameter than the rest of the piping system perhaps around the size of a two-inch PVC ball valve, where the rest of system was (if I recall right) about 1-inch or maybe 1.5? But I guess there could have been a component like this inside. I am familiar with these for automotive thermostats in cooling systems, but I never pictured that they might have meant this. Otoh, why not? It would do the job and maybe work for OP's project; especially if they are made for a range of different temperature conditions.