Water Softener Tracker

Arduino Housing

Tools

In addition to the sensor housing, I wanted to design a housing for the Arduino that's the core of the data collection module. The housing had the following requirements:

The first thing I did was model the Arduino and the attached perfboard. I had mounted the Arduino to a little piece of perfboard so I could solder on the connections. I also mounted three LEDs that are used by the program.

With that modeled, this is what I came up with. The holes on the top are lined up with the LEDs so they're visible from the outside. There are two fins on the sides which have holes to mount the unit to the inside of the water softener tank. The fin at the top (just barely visible in the images below) is to connect the two halves. The rectangular hole in the front lines up with the micro USB port on the Arduino so it can be plugged in. There are four angled channels, two per side. These channels are angled and placed for the dupont wires that attach the sensor units to the Arduino.

On the inside of the bottom piece, the Arduino and perfboard side nicely with the LEDs pointing upwards. The channels for the wires are placed such that the wires should enter the housing body near to where their pins are for the front two, and near the perfboard to be soldered on for the back two. There are two latches on the front side that mate with the top piece in order to keep the two halves set in place and kept from moving around.

On the inside of the top piece, the headers on the Arduino are meant to fit in the empty space towards the center to keep the Arduino in place. The three holes should sit nicely on top of the LEDs and have a chamfer in order to seat the tips of the LEDs. By the port for the USB, there's the opposite latch mechanism that's meant to mate with the latch on the bottom half.

Still interested? Go back to the Water Softener Salt Tracker and check out how other things work!