Sump pump failure alert

Utilizing the fact that ruuvi tags report angular position (from the Z accelerator readings) I have taped one in a swinging position to the discharge pipe of my sump pump just ABOVE the maximum water level. It reports to the RuuviCollector running on a raspberry pi. If the water level reaches the tag it begins to float and changes from a vertical position. The influxdb is queried every 10 minutes from a cron job. While the tag is positioned nearly vertically a small absolute value ( like .004 or -.004) is returned otherwise the tag is floating.

This is the same idea I used in the https://f.ruuvi.com/t/garage-door-monitor/3800

An interesting (but not very useful) side note is that when the pump does operate the movementCounter increments.

Let me know if you want to implement this or something similar and you lack the database or linux skills, I’d be glad to help you.

Once you have a ruuviCollector pushing data into an influxdb it is amazing the number of application you can run just by β€œsticking” another ruuvi somewhere!

1 Like

Update: My neighbor has a D-Link water-detection alarm which uses a sensor to detect water and sends a wifi message if water is detected.
UNFORTUNATELY both the sump pump and the detector / alarm were plugged into the same power strip which got unplugged resulting in a wet carpet! This poorly designed system has no way to report a failure and depends on wifi running and not changeing!

With the approach I outlined above the monitoring software detects that there is no readings from the ruuvi (like if it runs out of battery) and reports a failure!

Guess I will be installing a RaspberryPi and a Ruuvi in their basement soon!

1 Like