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Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io

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Accurate/smart oil sensor? (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 9 months ago by Balakirev@discuss.tchncs.de to c/homeassistant@lemmy.world

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We heat our house with oil (grumble grumble grumble) but our float sensor is not a very accurate measure and it's out of the way to actually see. Has anyone come across a sensor that works with HA and has been reliable? Bonus points for something that still has an "analog" view in case of problem

I've seen some sensors on Amazon but I'm skeptical of anything through there.

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[–] key@lemmy.keychat.org 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I have oil heat too and I struggle to imagine how you would add a sensor to it. That tank is solid and thick, trying to get anything inside it is a horrible idea and trying to sense through the metal is going to be prone to problems. In the past I've just pointed a camera at the main gauge.

[–] nogooduser@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

My tank came with a mounting point on the top of it where you can fit an ultrasonic sensor. You just configure it with the depth of your tank and that’s it. I have a unit inside that shows how much oil I have left.

Apparently, it uses an RF protocol that can be intercepted and interpreted in HA with the right dongle but I haven’t done that.

Edit: mine looks like this although with different branding.

[–] JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl 2 points 9 months ago

The only option I could think of would be integrating an industrial oil tank sensor.

A wire sensor that uses Time-domain-reflectometry would likely be the best, but expensive. This uses a corrosion resistant cable and uses wave reflections when a pulse changes mediums (air to oil) in order to give a level reading.

More difficult to DIY though. You have to know what you are doing.

Ultrasonic sensor might work, but it depends on if oil for home heating gives off fumes that would interfere with it.

Otherwise another DIY solution would be optical sensing like a ToF sensor. Maybe the most realistic for easy integration in ESPHome, but like the ultrasonic sensor, you would have to protect it from a full tank contaminating the sensor with oil.

If the tank is plastic, a capacitive sensor could work too.