Is the driveway flooded?

[Chad Gard]

Good thoughts….

My main concern with a float switch solution is some critter making it so the floats can’t float, and/or chomping the wires.  I feel like I’d need to encase it in something that would let water in, but protect it from current - my present best solution is drain tile set vertically, with a cap on top.  But then that void, depending on its size, becomes attractive to mice, voles, rats, paper wasps, ants, woodpeckers, turtles, honeybees, bats, o‘possum, raccoons, ground squirrels, squirrels, etc.  Either directly, chomping on wires or physically getting in the way, or indirectly, building nests and whatnot, they could plug up the works.  Granted, it’s not like this would be a critical thing.  But, still.

Zwave/etc. leak sensors might work, but seem expensive for what they are.  The last leak sensor I had was two wires on a clothespin held open by a baby aspirin, connected to an x10   DM10, and it worked as reliably as the x10 protocol allowed.  So the cost of a leak sensor seems a bit much.  I doubt the aspirin would work outdoors…

I have one of those lidar sensors. Originally got it hoping to determine whether vehicles were coming or going in the driveway.  But I could never get it to work on my Arduino, including using other folks’ unaltered code.  I’m wondering if I got a defective one…  I might have to look up some of the waterproof max sonar sensors, though.  If nothing else, I’d like to measure water level in stock tanks…

Right now, though, neither my wifi nor zwave networks reach that far.  Addressing that is a priority this year - probably buying the hardware this summer, then installing it in the late fall/winter.  Farmer cash flow and schedule…. We’ll have bridges going to far points of the property (Steve sent me info on some that have been working great of him), but we’ll also need a few access points for places where we want good wifi coverage.

Which brinsg up something of concern to me that you mentioned in your comments…  protecting outdoor ethernet in general…

I have a couple of challenges.  First, PoE devices obviously need to be hard wired.  I have a couple of PoE cameras on the house, but, want to install more further afield.  That brings up the lightning challenge. Also, for access points, bridges, and outdoor poe switches…  All of that can fit in various enclosures, probably at least some pole mounted.  But how to surge protect them?  I want to use managed switches for port security: no ripping my camera or access point off the pole/wall and plugging in your laptop to try to get a local / inside the firewall IP address.  But that negates the cheap/sacrificial hub possibility.  

Obviously not going to protect the switch/whatever from a direct strike to its pole, but I’m more concerned with the (long) cable runs and possibility of frying stuff on either end.  So, I currently plan to have ethernet surge protectors on both ends of cable runs.  But that makes for a lot of surge protectors.  There are a lot available, at many price points.  I know from solar surge protectors that some really don’t offer any protection at all, while others do quite well, and price doesn’t seem to be a factor.

So, any recommendations on which ones are good, and which suck?


-- 
Chad

-What's Cookin' at the Farm?  Recipes, menus, and more at http://twie.holeinthewoodsfarm.com

> On Feb 23, 2022, at 10:23 AM, James Sentman <james at sentman.com> wrote:
> 
> Ah, thats an interesting project! 
> 
> If you have access to the area and can put something there that won’t get taken away you can definitely build in some sensors and send the data back to XTension. The simplest would be something like a water proof box with something as simple as an X10 door/window sensor or other wireless contact closure device be it some other radio thing or a ZWave type sensor and then connect the output of it to a sump pump float switch also attached to the box, or a short pole to hold it all in place.  That would only work if the water will rise up enough to float the switch and you can make sure it doesn’t become physically tied up in weeds or something that would hold it under. There are LOTS of different kinds of float switches available from the sump pump ones I’ve already mentioned to stainless steel ones that can be screwed to the pole and measure just a few cm of water or even less. 
> 
> There are also the various ZWave and other water/leak sensors. You could attach one to a pole and perhaps work something out with a cover or in a box with some holes in it to let in flood water but to keep out the rain as much as possible. I havre no idea how those would work outside when subjected to all that humidity and insects moving into the box and such. Some experimentation might be necessary. But it would be simple in construction and not expensive and use only off the shelf stuff that we already know work for other things.
> 
> If you can get some power to it beyond a battery and your wifi goes that far then you can roll something with an arduino or other type device. Michael had built himself an ESP32 based arduino board that he stuck to the top of a pole in the middle of his pond so he could monitor it and add water automatically when it started to dry up. He used a “lidar” type sensor, ir laser time of flight sensor to measure the distance from the box he mounted it in to the top of the water. It would then send those readings to XTension via an HTTP hit to the JSON/HTTP server plugin it was running. Very simple to alter a couple of arduino example projects together into the code to do that. He had problems with it that it didn’t really want to see the surface of the water and he ended up putting a piece of Styrofoam  over the top of the pole so that the pole went through the middle of it. The sensor could read the distance to the float which would rise and fall up the pole along with the water.
> 
> Beyond the light sensor which might not work without a float, there are a LOT of sonar range finder things that are also available to connect to an arduino for only a few bucks. Or some fully water proof ones specifically for measuring the level in tanks. Max Sonar makes some outside fully water proof versions that can be either connected to an arduino and forwarded to XTension that way, or you can run a cable to them and then that directly into a serial port and into XTension as I have a plugin for all those devices already included in XTension. I have used them for many things over the years. I wouldn’t actually run a cable outside and then directly into the XTension machine as it will eventually get a close enough lightning hit that it will fry everything ;) So instead I would run an ethernet cable and some power to the box you build it in and there use a wiznet card to get it over the network to XTension. Then I’d plug the other end of that into a cheap sacrificial ethernet hub in the garage so that when it inevitably gets surged you can replace it for cheap. And perhaps consider an ethernet surge protector upstream from that as well… But lots of choices there too.
> 
> If you want to go with one of the remote devices and want some help with the arduino code or other aspects drop me a note off the list and I can help you put that together. If I don’t respond in a reasonable amount of time also feel free to resend me the email. I get pretty flooded with email sometimes and things can slip off the bottom of my list.
> 
> The idea of using a camera is interesting. You can certainly just check the cam to know, but if you want the computer to do so then some machine vision or something might be needed. A cheap raspberry pi and camera could be mounted in one of those clear faced water proof electrical boxes and just laid on the ground. If the water comes up you would see that the cam was under water and I’ll bet that some processing could be done on the image to figure that out which would be simpler than trying to tell from a camera mounted some distance away, but I’m not sure. With any type of camera you would almost also have to get power to it as it woudln’t run on batteries for very long. Of course, solar power is a possibility and a wireless connection, but that is also a lot more fiddling around with boards and batteries and ordering those parts and such. Unless this is something you’re passionate about spending a lot of time getting working i’d shy away from that ;)
> 
> Another possibility might be a light reflection type sensor. Many commercial devices that need to monitor water levels do so by shining an IR led through a bit of plastic and then reading the reflection back. If the sensor or emitter are under water the reflection level is significantly altered but I’m not sure I’ve seen any arduino examples for this and there would need to be quite a bit of logic to handle normal changes in reception just from ambient light but it would be an interesting project ;) 
> 
> So, WAY too many possibilities but trying out the first few would at least not be expensive if they turn out not to work well enough.
> 
> 
> 
>> On Feb 18, 2022, at 11:43 AM, Chad Gard <chad at holeinthewoodsfarm.com <mailto:chad at holeinthewoodsfarm.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> Is our driveway flooded? How deep?  How about the intersection to the east?
>> 
>> We have a river across the road, and the drive from the house to the road is 1/3 of mile, through woodsy swamp, and past our pond.  It floods every now and again.  More frequently, a key intersection about 2 miles down the road does.  Usually, we can get around that flooded intersection by going “the long way ‘round,” but if we forget and go the wrong way, sometimes we end up late to our destination.
>> 
>> Using USGS/NWS data doesn’t work so well.  Nearest sensor is about 9 miles downstream.  I know that when our drive floods, it reaches >= 14.1 feet, but it’s usually about 4-6 hours behind.  Also, sometimes the source of our floods is a ditch that is our Eastern property line. If the culvert gets clogged (usually beavers, this morning ice), the ditch will rise up to the level of the road, then flow over the road. At that point, the driveway is about 8” deep. This morning, the intersection was impassable, and we were about 3” from the water coming over the drive, but that’s because of an ice dam at the culvert, as well as on the river at a nearby bridge.  It’s 12.4 feet at the downstream gauge (flood stage is 11.6).
>> 
>> So, I’d like a way to determine if the driveway Is flooded directly, so we can be notified and take appropriate action if any is needed.  Ideally, we’d get a depth, too: if it’s <6”, no biggie.  If its 6-15”, only take the truck (unless it’s rapidly rising, in which case the current is likely too dangerous and there may be a deep washout in the drive, too).  If it’s 15-34”, notify the neighbor to the north we’ll be walking through for any emergency travel (so he doesn’t shoot us) and cancel all nonessential departure plans.  If it’s 34-46”, deploy sandbags.  If it’s >51” (the highest we’ve ever seen, a "250 year flood” 4 years ago) consider evacuation.  Really, if the driveway is over ~24”, we’re focused on little else (and the power will be out), so there’s not much need for any automation beyond that…
>> 
>> So, thoughts on inexpensive ways to do that?
> 
> Thanks,
>  James
> 
> 
> James Sentman                       http://www.PlanetaryGear.org <http://www.planetarygear.org/>		http://MacHomeAutomation.com <http://machomeautomation.com/>
> 
> 
> 
> 
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