For the last 50 years, Ovidiu’s Romanian village has relied on a small water source located at a spring, but due to increased droughts, they have since been dependent on an additional well. So far, the process of switching on the pump to refill the main reservoir has been done manually and without much precision, which is why he wanted to build an automated system for this task.

The system has two main parts: a peripheral device that sits just above the tank and reads the water levels, and a central unit that receives this information and can switch on the well’s pump whenever extra water is needed. Both configurations use an Arduino Nano as their control board while information is transmitted wirelessly through a pair of nRF24L01 transceivers. At the tank, water levels are measured with an ultrasonic distance sensor and sent to the central device where a powerful relay can then be toggled. Lastly, users can monitor the water level of the and the battery level by viewing a 20×4 LCD screen.

Ovidiu designed custom PCBs and 3D-printed enclosures for both parts of the system in order to conserve space and help keep water from interfering with the sensitive electronics. You can view this project in more detail here on Instructables.