RSSTOOLBOX: LeakFrog Water Alarm
Clever, and good review by The Gadgeteers. LeakFrog is the small water alarm with a big job. Behind the cute smile is a brain that knows when you have a water problem. LeakFrog sits patiently day and night - ready to sound its alarm at the first sign of a leak. [Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Oct 5, 2005 09:08 AM
Electronics |
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Anyone got a way to detect water with a computer that'll email you, your cell phone, etc so you can head home early to fix it before it's a problem?
I can see putting these in my computer room at work. But it's 6 stories up from me and I don't visit it even once a week. A beep only device is worthless.
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Froggy has the hard part figured out, all you need to do is figure a way to integrate this into an whole-house alarm, or to a computer. A simple relay across the buzzer could provide you what you would need to interface it into pretty much anything. Maybe someone here could give us a circuit that would detect the on state of something like a buzzer, and relay it to a chip that will stay tripped until reset (for a home alarm to detect).
$13 a sensor, thats cheap compared to other water sensors i've priced out.
Go Froggy Go!
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You can make a usable leak sensor out of a wooden clothespin, two thumbtacks, and an aspirin. Stick the tacks into the inner jaws of the clothespin with the wires under them so they act as contacts, when the pin is closed they connect the wires; then put the aspirin between the thumbtacks. When there's enough water to dissolve the aspirin, you can trigger whatever you want. Not as sensitive as the froggy type thing, but sometimes you want to detect a real flood, not get fooled by condensation.
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There are devices that will just shut off your water for you if they sense a leak (http://www.smartsensortechnologies.com/), but they're a lot more than $13. Plus, they're just not cute.
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I got some off of woot.com, mine just saved my butt with my washer leaking but how the heck do i reset the darn thing???? HELP PLEASE!
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