2

I'm looking for the way to be alerted remotely when I get a septic pump alarm in my summer house. The septic pump is a traditional one, with a buzzer that goes off when the float gets too high and there's obviously no "smart connectivity in the system."

I do see a couple of Wi-Fi-enabled septic pumps on the market but they are quite expensive and (based on reviews) not that great connectivity-wise (these people know how to build pumps, not IoT software).

A great alternative would be an independent alarm sound monitor which itself is Wi-Fi connected. This is the approach used for fire alarms by several security systems, like Ring and Abode - you configure a small puck, position it next to a "dumb" fire alarm and when the latter goes off, it picks the sound and alerts you. But those are fire-alarm specific. I wonder if anyone has found a similar device for septic alarms...

FWIW, I've built a crude device of that sort myself (ESP8266 board with a sound sensor attached) but the free cloud alert provider has recently eliminated the free plan and now I need to reconfigure the damn thing, which is a pain :-) So, an off-the-shelf device would be really great.

Alexander L. Belikoff
  • 263
  • 1
  • 5
  • 13
  • I have an alarm on my home alarm system and it will send me an alert if the water rises above the level I placed the sensor. It supplies a contact closure to the alarm system. I can get the alarm if I have SMS reception anywhere worldwide. It took about 10 minutes for the installer to add it. – Gil Nov 26 '22 at 20:48
  • 1
    A Raspberry Pi may be able to do this. Water sensor on the GPIO pins, script to send an email or text. I'd personally go wired Ethernet instead of Wi-Fi, and a power backup for the whole internet system in the house. Wi-Fi can disconnect, which would be bad for emergency messaging. – Triplefault Nov 26 '22 at 22:29
  • Do you have a make and model for the existing alarm? – ThreePhaseEel Nov 26 '22 at 23:08
  • I don't right off the top of my head - likely something from the early nineties. I ruled out a Raspberry Pi based solution because the septic tank is at some distance from the home, so supplying power to the new device would be a challenge (I don't want to hack the existing wiring). My sound sensor-based contraption sits in the crawl space where it can feed of a standard USB socket. – Alexander L. Belikoff Nov 27 '22 at 06:05
  • "An off the shelf device" pushes this into being a Shopping Question, which is offtopic because available products and their quality change so rapidly. If you're willing to back off to asking if there's a way to get a remote alarm, I think that would be considered on topic even if it's answered with specific devices as examples. – keshlam Nov 27 '22 at 20:42

0 Answers0