Flood Warning Systems - How to Use Sensors for Water Resources Management, Flood Alerts, and Flooding / Water Detection With Flood Monitoring Systems and Industrial IoT Applications

Need to monitor water levels with flood warning systems?

Take a gander at how these Smart Cities in Virginia are using Flood Monitoring Systems with Tools.Valarm.net:

Virginia Beach, Virginia
Newport News, Virginia

Are you ready to monitor storm surge, rising tides, and water levels? See the stories above with IoT sensor systems monitoring flooding and get in touch with us at Info@Valarm.net

**Update: The article below is from our legacy Android app!

Valarm is Industrial IoT. We'll help you, your teams, and your business with Industrial IoT applications using Tools.Valarm.net.

Have a look at our Fluids + Water Monitoring Systemspage for exactly how to effectively perform your water resources management needs.

We recommend using GSM, WiFi, or ethernet connector devices / sensors hubs with any Industrial IoT sensors since they're much more reliable than Androids for Industrial IoT applications like:

You can use Valarm Industrial IoT, telemetry and remote sensor monitoring solutions with any of the following connector devices:

GSM Sensor Hub
WiFi Sensor Hub
Ethernet Sensor Hub
Valarm Industrial IoT sensor data is GPS location-tagged, time-stamped, and sent to Valarm Tools Cloud / tools.valarm.net via any internet connectivity like WiFi, ethernet, or cell network. With Valarm Tools Cloud you’ll find services for mapping, graphing, and APIs like JSON to help you with your real-time, geo-enabled sensor monitoring and Industrial IoT applications.

Valarm compatible sensors and Industrial IoT hardware are available at shop.valarm.net.

Have a look at our Industrial IoT (IIoT) Customer Stories pagefor more on how these remote sensor monitoring and telemetry solutions are deployed in various industries.

How do you use this to improve your organization's operations and effectiveness? Learn how all of this works together on our Web Dashboardsfor Remote Monitoring, Telemetry, Sensors & Industrial IoT.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us at Info@valarm.netif you've got any questions.

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- Is your basement flooding or water heater leaking?
- Do you want to keep track of the water level in your swimming pool, rainwater reservoir or personal fishing pond?
- How much water or liquid nutrient is remaining in the container for your plants?

In this How To tutorial we’ll teach you how to do water detection with an Android device and a Yocto-Knob sensor.

First, get the Valarm Pro app on your device from the Google Play store. We recommend using a dedicated device (Android devices are more affordable every day) for applications like this.

Next, in Valarm Pro go to the Yoctopuce settings screen to set up your Yocto-Knob electrical resistance sensor for water detection.

Step 1: See Real World Flood Warning Systems

How do you, your teams, and your organization monitor flooding with water level sensor systems?

Have a look at how Smart Cities in Virginia are using Flood Monitoring Systems with Tools.Valarm.net

Do you need to monitor storm surge, rising tides, and water levels?

You can use Tools.Valarm.net with sensors made by any hardware manufacturer.

The City of Virginia Beach uses Senix brand sensors.

Newport News, Virginia, deploys flood warning systems using Flowline sensors that regularly report water level sensor measurements to Tools.Valarm.net.

Questions? Please don't hesitate to get in touch with us at Info@Valarm.net

The rest of this instructables tutorial shows an older way to monitor water levels. Contact us and we'll work with you to deploy your most effective remote water monitoring systems.

Step 2: Connect Wires and Leads to Sensor

Connect a wire to the ground as well as however many of the Yocto-Knob lead wires you would like to use (up to 5).

Each lead provides you with a threshold for the water level that is important for you. For example, with 5 wires you could put each one an inch apart and have Valarm alert you via text message or email if any of the wires are triggered.

Now based on which wire is triggered you will know how high the water is, e.g., 1, 3, or 5 inches.

Step 3: Calibrate the Sensor

Now you will calibrate each of the channels. Tap the calibration button then begin calibrating. While you are calibrating Valarm, submerge the dry ground wire in a water source (tea and coffee cup used in the example image above) and dip the lead you are calibrating into the water. Take the lead out of the water and dry it while still calibrating. Then dip it in a few more times to calibrate water thresholds for Valarm and the Yocto-Knob. Do this for as many channels (up to 5) as you would like to use. If you just want to know if water is present and not measure specific heights then you will only need to calibrate one channel.

Step 4: Set Up Your Water Detection / Flood Alert Environment

With Valarm and Yocto-Knob calibrated you will set up your water detection scenario.

In this example we’ve used a French Press (also makes great coffee and tea!) to demonstrate Valarm’s ability to alert you to different heights and water levels.

Set up each wire in your scenario to your desired level.

Step 5: Confirm Sensor Settings

For water detection, use the Inverted Min/Max option for each Yocto-Knob channel since you will get an increased resistance measurement when water has reached each level.

Use the Scan All button to see what kinds of measurements you get with your wires in and out of the water.

Here we found that values above 500 occur when the wire is submerged. So we set the max to 500 meaning Valarm will trigger alerts when water reaches this sensor wire.

Step 6: Configure Your Alerts: Text Messages (SMS), Email, Web Maps, Graphs

Configure your Valarm alerts to send out text messages (SMS) and/or email messages whenever your specific water height is triggered.

Remotely control your device and sensor by text message.

Post all of your data to the web at tools.valarm.net for visualization, data export/download, and analysis.

The screenshot above shows a water level trigger being uploaded to tools.valarm.net and an alert being sent out via email.