DYI Electronic Flood Alarm & Pump Switch

[pedcab]

There´s a friend of mine that has a similar system to "keep an eye" on his country house.

He even has sensors in the fridge

[Deadeye]

Originally Posted by pedcab

...I don´t like float switches...

Good enough for me. I asked because, on the boats I was building until recently (starting my own now...woohoo!), we used an in-house bilge alarm and fire system whereby a float switch sent a signal to an LED and Piezo buzzer at the helm station. We stored many of our customers' boats so all the alarms were tested twice a year during maintenance/refit.

If I could add a suggestion, when selecting the horn/buzzer for your alarm make sure you get one that doesn't sound like anything else in the marina. We used the same buzzer available from our wholesaler that West sells. Many times I broke into a run on the dock heading for one of our boats to find it was only some DIYer's homemade alarm system letting everyone know the mercury switch had been triggered by a wake....

Personally, I'm going to wire a flash relay into the spreader lights as well so there's a visual indicator if I'm not on the boat. The anchor light would be a good idea too but I want to keep all the nav lights as a dedicated, independent system.

[pedcab]

Funny of you to mention the flash relay.

Because I keep Fulô at a swinging mooring I also use this system to trigger a led flasher I´ve made with some high intensity white LEDS and a 555 IC.

This way and everytime I park the car at the sailing club I know for sure if its time to paddle all the way down to my boat to clean up any rain water that may have found its way in...

[Deadeye]

My thinking too, is that if an alarm is going off on the boat and I'm not there it'll make it easier for a good samaritan to lend a hand. I know I wouldn't have any compunction about trying to save someone else's boat.

Speaking of 555's, I have one that I'm playing with but electronics aren't my strong suit. I can wire up switch and breaker panels and stuff, but I'm still learning how to read an electronic schematic (old dog, new trick). Is there a reference online that dumbs down what the 555 pins do ? The symbols and abbreviations are still Greek to me and I need a Rosetta Stone of sorts, lol.

[pedcab]

There are tons of great sites on the web with lots of ideas on how to use the 555.

The 555 is one of the most versatile ICs out there. With it you can do anything from a ring tone generator to a timed relay and it is very simple to wire up to do things that can cost great money on stores.

About the pinout description, maybee I´d have a hard time trying to explain it to you (since my english is not very good). For instace, OUT is the output- the signal you can use to trigger a relay, a transistor, etc. VCC is the power input from where the 555 gets its power. RESET is the input by which the IC resets to the initial stage of whatever it is wired to do in a given application...GND is the groud - pin. DISCHARGE is, roughly, the pin where you connect your RC (resistor-capacitor) sub-circuit in order to obtain a desired time constant. Generally speaking, the higher the capacity, or the resistance the longer the time factor, and vice-versa(within reasonable values)... etc, etc, etc...

Anyway, the datasheets of the various 555 manufacturers are usually very compreensive and even provide some application suggestions...


I suggest that you check out these sites that I´ve sorted out of the thousands available on this subject:

555 timer IC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

LM555 Timer Circuits

555 Timer/Oscillator Tutorial

TALKING ELECTRONICS 555 Page1

Hope I´ve been of any help

Regards

Pedro

[Deadeye]

I didn't see your reply right away. Thanks!

[Clarity2]

Has anyone had actual experience with the Boatsense monitor? I love the idea of it: if water is rising in your bilge, or your battery is low, or any of up to 3 other things sets it off, it texts up to 3 phone numbers & says what's wrong. But how hard to install? How reliable? How's customer tech support? And questions like that...