Irrigation Flow System

[PJs]

Rick,

My professional experience in flow measurement & control is with Mass flow (DP/SP/temp), thermal mass flow and velocity for gasses and particulates. As I indicated before I thought your flow measurement could be done with Mass flow or Ultrasonic. Converting either to pulse output would result in a loss of all the accuracy and possibilities for control they offer.

I do still think that ultrasonic would do a lot for your system but would require considerable changes to your input and likely the code. This also assumes you are using city drinking water that has a good/relatively constant conductivity for the low flow rates.

The only other possibilities I see is a Mag Meter front end and it's also non invasive, which could be converted to pulses but would require some coils, additional power/circuits to read them and some messing around with calibration then convert that to a pulse through some kind of circuit...a comparator/inverter to (74LS121) monostable multivibrator or a couple of nor gates and RC, maybe??

The links have good +/- write ups. Also ran across this white paper on a unique Mass Flow measurement.

Not sure what type of prox sensor you tried but would think that would work. There are three basic types inductive, capacitive & magnetic in 4 flavors NPN/PNP/NO/NC....

I also took a look at the Hunter offerings and they have some nice features at reasonable prices, including 2 wire pulsed output and their controllers have wifi for decent costs I thought based on features.

Other than that, getting Badger to build it in based on your design is a plausible direction??

Best of luck with where ever you take this. ~PJ