@cbutcher wrote:
@altenbach wrote:
There is no water in the dam, just in the lake behind it. 😄
What is the capacitor supposed to sense and where is it located?
The capacitor is in the dam, and it's supposed to sense the water leaking into the cavities between bricks... 🙂
LabVIEW wouldn't be able to measure the capacity or the water level, but it's easy to process values you measured with some additional hardware 😉
What you want is called an impedance measurement. A nice way to measure small impedance changes is an AC bridge.
Another simple way: build an RC oscillator (using the famous 555 or ....) or an LC oscillator and measure the change in frequency. If the frequency is below 20 kHz you can use your soundcard line/mic in ...
Capacitive water level measurement is tricky about the elektrodes. I once read a solution by using two 'plastic' water pipes of different diameter ( not complete platic, just what you get in the home depot for water supply: it's a compound with an inner aluminium pipe , bud nicely isolated. NO CORROSION! but isolate the lower ends 😉 ) and build a coaxial capacitor.
Place the (RC/555) sensing electronic directly on top of that coaxial capacitor couple the AC on your supply .. and you only need two wires (best twisted pair) to sense the level over long distance.
However monitoring a dam migth involve some risc accessments ... guess why qualified sensors cost that much...
Greetings from Germany
Henrik
LV since v3.1
“ground” is a convenient fantasy
'˙˙˙˙uıɐƃɐ lɐıp puɐ °06 ǝuoɥd ɹnoʎ uɹnʇ ǝsɐǝld 'ʎɹɐuıƃɐɯı sı pǝlɐıp ǝʌɐɥ noʎ ɹǝqɯnu ǝɥʇ'
