I had an unusual problem to solve recently - I have a cabin that's completely off grid and not connected to any public water supply, running on stored tank water only. This is in a fairly arid area, so water is precious and can't be wasted.
One risk that's been sitting in the back of my mind is the chance that some part of the plumbing in the cabin or surrounding garden springs a leak, in which case the water pressure pump would turn on and happily pump the tank dry, potentially wasting thousands of liters of water and eventually damaging the pump.
I couldn't find any cheap or simple device that could limit how long the pump is allowed to continuously run for at any one time. So I wrote some custom firmware for a Sonoff POW Origin (POWR316). It constantly monitors the amount of power used by the pump, and shuts it off after 15 minutes of continuous use. The timer/cut-off is easily reset using the button on the front of the device.
The POWR316 is useful for a lot more than this, of course, however for a very small cost it's completely removed the possibility of a small disaster.
I've uploaded the code to GitHub if anyone else would find this useful:
One risk that's been sitting in the back of my mind is the chance that some part of the plumbing in the cabin or surrounding garden springs a leak, in which case the water pressure pump would turn on and happily pump the tank dry, potentially wasting thousands of liters of water and eventually damaging the pump.
I couldn't find any cheap or simple device that could limit how long the pump is allowed to continuously run for at any one time. So I wrote some custom firmware for a Sonoff POW Origin (POWR316). It constantly monitors the amount of power used by the pump, and shuts it off after 15 minutes of continuous use. The timer/cut-off is easily reset using the button on the front of the device.
The POWR316 is useful for a lot more than this, of course, however for a very small cost it's completely removed the possibility of a small disaster.
I've uploaded the code to GitHub if anyone else would find this useful:
GitHub - octal-ip/POWR316_Pump_Limiter: A modification to the SonOff POWR316 to limit the amount of time a load can run for
A modification to the SonOff POWR316 to limit the amount of time a load can run for - octal-ip/POWR316_Pump_Limiter
github.com