"Ben Okopnik" wrote: > Lew, that's an interesting statement. What's unreliable about a > well-designed float (e.g., http://x.co/KGoQ), or for that matter, > the > cycling pump that we were talking about? ------------------------------------- Everything.
Float switches define the baseline of a failed application. I make a living replacing failed float switches in the industrial market. You can find similar stories of failure in the recreational marine market. A "Rule" brand product comes to mind. They jam with crud or residual build up or short out. --------------------------------- > These seem like no-brainers. ------------------------------ That is exactly what they are. ----------------------------- > It's not like you're working with high-viscosity materials here; > it's > pretty well limited to water with maybe some oil and fuel mixed in. > What's the catch? ---------------------------- Gunk. ------------------------------ > OK, I can see conductivity as being of marginal use if the contacts > get > coated with oil; somewhat of a ditto for capacitance, although for > slightly different reasons. What's the failure mode for ultrasonic > or > pulse radar? ------------------------------- Continuous ultrasonic suffers from gunk build up and/or foam, same with ultrasonic point level (gap switch) technology. These days the US Navy is big on pulse radar at $2K-$3K each, not to mention size and power consumption. Not much opportunity in the recreational marine market at those levels<G>. Bottom line, of the 10-12 level measuring technologies available, none can provide a reliable solution at a price, physical size, and power consumption the market can support. Lew _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://liveaboardonline.com/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardonline.com/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
