We heat our house with oil (grumble grumble grumble) but our float sensor is not a very accurate measure and it’s out of the way to actually see. Has anyone come across a sensor that works with HA and has been reliable? Bonus points for something that still has an “analog” view in case of problem
I’ve seen some sensors on Amazon but I’m skeptical of anything through there.
I also have an oil boiler, and a tank in the garden. The tank was fitting with an Apollo Ultrasonic oil level sensor, which sends a signal to base station with a very basic LCD display in the house via 433Mhz radio.
I use an RTL-SDR USB radio dongle, a cheap 433MHz antenna and the rtl_433 software to monitor the signals from the ultrasonic sensor, which transits roughly once an hour. The level measurement transmitted is a fairly accurate centimetre value (I compared it with manual measurements with a dip stick for a few months).
The base station only showed a vague level indication with 10 bars, but now I have more a more precise smart display of the tank level, without any extra modification to the tank system.
I’m starting to wonder if there are white label ultrasonic sensors out there since this looks like the Beckett. It also looks like this won’t support 120 AC. I’m in the USA and our namby pamby grid can’t handle it.
ESPHome has support for a few sensors that might get the job done… would weighing the tank be an option, or are you looking for something more off-the-shelf?
I’ve yet to mess around with any of the liquid level sensing tech, so I don’t have any specific recommendations… but ESPHome has a huge array of different sensor filtering options which should really help. I think sensor noise and settling time are a lot of what complicate the task.
I have oil heat too and I struggle to imagine how you would add a sensor to it. That tank is solid and thick, trying to get anything inside it is a horrible idea and trying to sense through the metal is going to be prone to problems. In the past I’ve just pointed a camera at the main gauge.
My tank came with a mounting point on the top of it where you can fit an ultrasonic sensor. You just configure it with the depth of your tank and that’s it. I have a unit inside that shows how much oil I have left.
Apparently, it uses an RF protocol that can be intercepted and interpreted in HA with the right dongle but I haven’t done that.
Edit: mine looks like this although with different branding.
The only option I could think of would be integrating an industrial oil tank sensor.
A wire sensor that uses Time-domain-reflectometry would likely be the best, but expensive. This uses a corrosion resistant cable and uses wave reflections when a pulse changes mediums (air to oil) in order to give a level reading.
More difficult to DIY though. You have to know what you are doing.
Ultrasonic sensor might work, but it depends on if oil for home heating gives off fumes that would interfere with it.
Otherwise another DIY solution would be optical sensing like a ToF sensor. Maybe the most realistic for easy integration in ESPHome, but like the ultrasonic sensor, you would have to protect it from a full tank contaminating the sensor with oil.
If the tank is plastic, a capacitive sensor could work too.
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