Detect water THROUGH a material with this sensor

[@HATipsByLarry]

Great for the use case. To get around the problem with mmWave sensor like the LD2410C mmWave sensors that i use i reduce the sensor max distance to cover only half the room. Then Another for the other half for room fans that stand on the floor i have HA turn them off aa i have a PIR sensor by the door leading out of the room. Anyway that works for me. This will be nice to use in the bathroom though

[@lets-automate]

Yeah, if you get the LD2410s in a sweat spot they work well. Otherwise, they are either not sensitive enough or too sensitive. I need to divide my lounge into 2 sensors for more accuracy, but not gotten around to it yet.

[@HATipsByLarry]

@@lets-automate Yea finding the sweet spot is pretty much the rule for any sensor as far as that goes 😁If you don't put the sensor in the right spot to sense whatever it is it needs to sense then it's not going to work right.

[@BigBird2202]

Very informative thank you very much

[@stefa168]

Looks pretty useful! I might use a couple of them to monitor my house water tank (we've got low pressure so we have a pump for drinking water). I have another kind of sensor for the rainwater tank since it is buried in the ground; it uses ultrasound but it is very expensive...

[@lets-automate]

That seems like a good practical use for them! I briefly looked at ultrasonic previously, but I should take another look.

[@stefa168]

@@lets-automate Take a look at MaxBotix ultrasonic sensors, I bought the one specified on ESPHome sensor list. It was ~100$, however at least it is waterproof and can reach the bottom of the tank (yes, it is very deep!)

[@cm5569]

Found them to be a wee bit unreliable when thicker plastic is involved, like what is used in outdoor water tanks.

[@yakoenicol]

How long can the wire to the ESP be?

[@lets-automate]

Because it's a simple on off signal (not I²C for example) it can be as long as you need really. I tend to use CAT5 ethernet wire for things like this to pass the signal, ground and vcc. Note that this device is designed to run at 5v, not 3.3v though, so with a long wire you may get too much voltage drop for it to work accurately. If you know what a voltage divider is then it would be best to pass 5v to the device and then on the input of the ESP use 2 resistors to bring that 5v down to 3.3v for the gpio input signal.

[@yakoenicol]

@@lets-automate Great news, thanks for the reply and for the great videos you make!

[@claudiomarino9750]

Hi, can this be replicated with the XKC-Y23A-NPN sensor connected to the ESP32-C3?

[@lets-automate]

It looks like a very similar sensor, so I suspect it would work fine, but don't have one to test. I like that, that version has a sensitivity calibration feature, that's cool. Note that the ESP32-C3 is still in beta for ESPHome, but again, I imagine it will work fine. Good luck!

[@claudiomarino9750]

@@lets-automate Thanks for the reply, I made the same connection and the same configuration changing only the input pin, I wasn't able to make it work... it seems that the sensor can't work well with 3.3v but I'm not sure, I have seen people who made it with the PNP version and it works well, do you have any ideas?

[@lets-automate]

What's the behaviour? Is it just stuck on one state or randomly changing? You could be right on the voltage. Search for "voltage divider for esp32" in Google. If you connect your sensor (+) to 5v instead of 3.3v and put a 10k resistor then a 20k resistor in series between the sensor output and ground, then connect the gpio pin between the 2 resistors you should have 3.3v on the output instead of 5v but the sensor will be powered by 5v. If that doesn't work then have a play with different gpio pins and try pull-up and pull-down configuration options. Try removing the pullup/pulldown config line, because the sensor could already one internally anyway.

[@cm5569]

@@lets-automate The one you haved used also has sensitivity calibration. You would need to pop the back out.

[@lets-automate]

Yes it does, although I haven't had to use it tbh! It's a clever little sensor.