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MEW, ME, RCM&E and Model Boats under new ownership
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I just want to know if the water is above a set height in the glass. The sensor in the Model Boats article has a LED and a phototransistor. It looks like a simple red LED, see photo below. This is positioned around the gauge glass, and detects water level on a simple on/off basis. It uses lots of components which can all be replaced by a processor (I think), but I m trying to understand how the sensor works. As the original electronics has adjustment for photo sensitivity I suspect the water attenuates the light and the signal is fed to a comparator, it would be a lot neater if the actual sensor was on/off, which can in principle be done by shining a thin beam offset through the glass, with water in you get much more deflection (refraction) but I ve only seen this on much bigger glass tubes in industrial environment. I m hoping to avoid having to miniaturise it myself (idle b gger)