A cleaner way to wet the bed

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This will be nice to try out once I can :D

You've done this quite quickly.

If I had the extra components I would have tried working on a version myself. I have an actual Arduino Mega, that I got through work, Radioshack, for 25% off during a sale and then used my employee discount (20%) on top of that XD

I have something like 50 8-bit shift registers, 1000's of resistors and more than 2000 LED's, ~2000 1N5408 diodes (3A 1Kv) and very few other parts. LOL
Mouser decided to send me 3 boxes (1 of each) of 1k, 2.2k and 10k resistors. Funny thing is that I only ordered 10 pieces of 1k, 5 of 2.2k and 1 10k. I paid about $0.10/each for them, so I got 3,000 resistors for $1.60 XD ... I have to see if I can find the 2.2 and 10k boxes. I put them up in storage somewhere :|

Edit:

If you're able to, would you be able to make a video of how much water that pushes out, please? Mainly the overall flow rate is what I'm interested in for the video. If you have a measuring cup, say 1 or 2 US cups or something like 250ml cup or something, to show how fast it fills it up in 60 seconds.
 
FluffyMastiff said:
You've done this quite quickly.
Click to expand...
On the contrary, I felt it took me far too long to do this...
If I had the extra components I would have tried working on a version myself. I have an actual Arduino Mega, that I got through work, Radioshack, for 25% off during a sale and then used my employee discount (20%) on top of that XD

I have something like 50 8-bit shift registers, 1000's of resistors and more than 2000 LED's, ~2000 1N5408 diodes (3A 1Kv) and very few other parts. LOL
Mouser decided to send me 3 boxes (1 of each) of 1k, 2.2k and 10k resistors. Funny thing is that I only ordered 10 pieces of 1k, 5 of 2.2k and 1 10k. I paid about $0.10/each for them, so I got 3,000 resistors for $1.60 XD ... I have to see if I can find the 2.2 and 10k boxes. I put them up in storage somewhere :|
Click to expand...
I tried to make it use only very basic hardware. I'd recommend using an IRF510 mosfet to switch the pump on and off but you could probably use a regular transistor too. Mosfets just work really well with arduinos and can switch a lot of current without overheating.
If you're able to, would you be able to make a video of how much water that pushes out, please? Mainly the overall flow rate is what I'm interested in for the video. If you have a measuring cup, say 1 or 2 US cups or something like 250ml cup or something, to show how fast it fills it up in 60 seconds.
Click to expand...
I'm sure once you download and load the source you'll understand. This isn't something you are going to look at and decide if you like it or not. Its highly configurable, so you can adjust it however you like and it takes care of the work. Though there is a 4 minute cap on how long you can set the "event" time to run. I may have to increase that, I don't know how fast the pump moves water. Here is the limit stataement. 4*60 seconds max: AdjustUp(settings_event_max_sec,true,1,4*60);

Thanks for taking a look at it. Be sure and let me know if you have any feedback.... problems, questions, suggestions, complaints, new ideas, things to change, etc.

Feel free to share the link. https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BxzJszK9fBB3MEwxSlN0VEdEcms&usp=sharing
 
Thank you.

Whenever I can get everything, and get it running I'll let you know. I don't know if I'll be able to or not though, so it's all hanging from a financial cliff right now

Edit:

I just bought the Keypad LCD and the pump, so I guess I'll find out in 7-40 days... it seems to ship from China possibly.

I'll get the Mosfet from Radioshack, although it's a bit more expensive, but it's convenient I suppose. LOL

The pump listing states 100ML/minute. We'll see.

I went through some of the source code and it looks well done.... Better than I could do :)
 
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You could use a regular pump if you wanted to, but there will be a few things to consider:
1. if the water supply (bottle) is below grade, the line will likely have siphoned off most of the water back to the supply, so it will have to pump it back. Some pumps can't auto-prime. To fix that, you run the line up and out of the bottle, down to the floor where the pump is, and back up from there, so the pump doesn't get siphoned out
2. regardless of where you put the pump, it'll likely siphon off most of the water from the pump to the delivery end, so you may need to add a little extra pump time (no problem with my sketch)
3. if you for some reason have the supply at or near the same height as the delivery, it may continue to siphon out after the pump has stopped, and over the course of a few minutes to a few hours (with the pump off) completely empty the supply

ok, 100mL/minute, that'd be a liter every 5 minutes. I had imagined a 1, or maybe 1.5 liter supply for myself. My "event range" defaults to between 30 and 90 minutes delay, averaging one event per hour. So if it fired off 8 events overnight, that'd be 187mL per event. at 100mL/minute, that'd be an average event time of 1:52 which is completely doable with this sketch, but is pretty slow. But if you wanted fewer, larger wettings, you might want to go with a faster peristolic pump or a regular pump. It looks like you have two options here... a fast wetting would probably be over before you woke up enough to realize what was happening, and would probably be a bit of a shocking chill. A slow wetting you might not even wake up for, or you'd wake up and it would still be in progress. Which way would you prefer to not have control? It's over before you realize it was happening, or you've started to wet and can't stop?

Just thinking about improvements, I suppose I could link the delay and event times, so if it picked a longer random delay, it would pick the same ratio of longer event. (that's actually more realistic too I suppose?) That's not too difficult to implement, just add a menu for "event length" "range / relative", "relative" would hide the event_min and event_max, and would unhide another new menu for event_ratio. In other words, you could set it to relative with a ratio of say "180" and it would make an event of 20 seconds if it followed a delay of 1 hour (3600 seconds) (3600/180=20) A ratio of 16 would be needed to run an event for 1:52 (187 sec) on an average delay of 1 hr (3600 sec) 3600/187 = 16

That's what I love about arduino... no rewiring, no hardware redesign... just download the new sketch and hit UPLOAD. :)

Here is a mostly complete pic of the way I use mosfets with arduino
http://www.electro-tech-online.com/attachments/pwr-trans-gif.58228/

I use a 10k series resistor to the GPIO and 1meg resistor to ground, and I install a general purpose 1 amp flyback diode (not shown in that pic) between drain and sink to protect the mosfet from the inductive spike from the motor or relay when it loses power from the mosfet. Resistor values are somewhat flexible, and can vary from one mosfet to another. I just aim for reliably turns on and consistently turns off and stay off.
 
also, the sketch supports a movement sensor, and can delay the next event a few minutes it it detects movement. (so if you happen to be awake and moving around when an event approaches, it will wait for you to fall asleep before firing)

http://www.ebay.com/itm/141759454140

Looks like a tall 10uF electrolytic cap with thin wires. You can get them locally - go to any pet store and buy the cheapest cat toy that makes a electronic chirp sound when the cat bats it around. Take apart and harvest the "vibration sensor".

This part is optional, and defining the movement_dpin will make that menu option appear for setting movement delay time.
 
bambinod said:
also, the sketch supports a movement sensor, and can delay the next event a few minutes it it detects movement. (so if you happen to be awake and moving around when an event approaches, it will wait for you to fall asleep before firing)

http://www.ebay.com/itm/141759454140

Looks like a tall 10uF electrolytic cap with thin wires. You can get them locally - go to any pet store and buy the cheapest cat toy that makes a electronic chirp sound when the cat bats it around. Take apart and harvest the "vibration sensor".

This part is optional, and defining the movement_dpin will make that menu option appear for setting movement delay time.
Click to expand...

Sadly, my local Radioshack didn't have the MOSFET... didn't have any MOSFETs and just a few low end transistors :| ... looking on their website, it states "Transistors are our specialty"

They did have the 1M resistors though.

Oh well, I'll figure something out... Actually, thinking about it, I'll have to dig out my component case and see if I have the MOSFET in there
 
you can drive a transistor to run the pump maybe? or transistor to drive a relay if the current is too high for the transistor? (also a transistor to a relay is useful if the pump is more then 5v and has to have a higher voltage supply)

You can salvage a mosfet from any switching power supply.
 
oh yeah. Where's that old 1000 watt power supply hiding at.

Once I get that pump, I'll test out the current rating on it at various voltages and post them here. That is if you haven't done it already.

*Goes to find the old power supply now*
 
be sure to check the packaging. Could be N channel, could be P channel.

Lots of other gooies in there, opto isolators can be very useful. High current low resistance resistors useful for current measurement. High voltage caps. etc
 
of course :p
 
I've been slowly and painfully desoldering components, more than I care to count, from this old 1kW PSU and I finally found a MOSFET... I still can't access it yet though, but I was able to get the part number and brand to look it up.

It's a ST Microelectronics MOSFET N-Ch 900 Volt 5.8 A Zener SuperMESH (Part Number: STP6NK90Z ) (Not sure how you feel about opening a PDF, but it's from mouser.com)

Do you think that MOSFET would work?

Here's an album of pictures that I took while deconstructing the PSU.

You might be interested in this album, it's a DIY Desktop Power Supply that I made maybe 7 years ago. It has 3v, 5v and 12v outputs. Of course using an old 430w computer PSU
 
that'll probably work fine. Remember that mosfets are somewhat vulnerable to static discharge. (they're a lot more hardy than a lot of basic low power fets tho) So don't be too abusive.

I know that's how I got my first components, was by cleaning off boards from broken clocks, radios, VCRs, etc. I still have one or two of them in my parts boxes here.
 
I just got it off not even 10 minutes ago... something around 6 hours to get to that thing :damnpc: ... Now I remember why I told me manager/engineer to go F himself when he decided he wanted something like 75 highly populated boards taken apart for the components. :sweatdrop:

Hopefully I didn't fry it. It was pretty hot.

I do feel bad for all the SMD resistors and capacitors that I fried so far
 
well I checked the peristolic pump that I do happen to have onhand and it sucks pretty bad. It's loud and very slow. I think it'd be lucky to get 10mL/minute. So be sure to get one with a decent stated pumping speed.
 
I got the one that was linked in the tread, the $5.99 one.

I'll see if it's any good whenever it arrives
 
FluffyMastiff said:
I got the one that was linked in the tread, the $5.99 one.

I'll see if it's any good whenever it arrives
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ug, hope its better than mine, that's what I have here I think

will look around for something better
 
The one that I linked earlier might be better, although more expensive.
 
FluffyMastiff said:
You could use a small water solenoid/water pump (12v) and a Arduino to control this.
Click to expand...

Mouser isn't a good source for cheap parts ;)

This looks to be the same pump for much less:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/141787798399

Strange, that one and the one I linked seem to be 90% of the listsings on ebay under this search:
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fro....X.TRS0&_nkw=Peristaltic+Liquid+Pump&_sacat=0

The slow one is probably for pH balance, where they're dropping in soda or something to correct the pH slowly.

expensive, claimed rate of up to 250mL/min:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/262412317863
they work hard to not show you the top or side views, and here's why, it's a big box:
http://g01.a.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1pe10MpXXXXa6XFXXq6xXFXXXj/220623423/HTB1pe10MpXXXXa6XFXXq6xXFXXXj.jpg

100-600mL/min for a lot more
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/x/32230541132.html

claims 140:
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/x/32493759439.html

cheap claimed 100, looks very similar to the slower one I have, other listings for pumps with the same action state max 60mL but that could be the motor:
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/x/32596844750.html


At any rate, try to find one that runs on 5-6v so it can run off the same power supply as the arduino

oh, nice, used market. $14 for 1,500mL/mi
http://www.ebay.com/itm/131536422422
that may be a winner. not sure how it is both diaphram and peristolic tho?

I am looking at 12v fuel pumps right now. They don't describe them as "peristolic" but should be high flow and I assume they are self-priming so they shouldn't allow backflow?
 
This could easily be made wearable by repurposing a a camelbak. You could wear it around during the day for simulated accidents, or if you're a stomach sleeper you could probably even sleep wearing it without worrying about having long tubes running to your bed. Generally a pouch holds 1.5-2L of water, so plenty of supply. Lithium battery pack designed for recharging phones on the go (there are even some with a 12v output) to power it all, and then distribute among the camelbak pockets.
 
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