What is Moisture Sensor and applications?

Soil moisture sensors measure the water content in soil. Since the direct gravimeter measurement of free soil moisture requires removing, drying, and weighting of a sample, soil moisture sensors measure the volumetric water content indirectly by using some other property of the soil, such as electrical resistance, dielectric constant, or interaction with neutrons, as a proxy for the moisture content. The relation between the measured property and soil moisture must be calibrated and may vary depending on environmental factors such as soil type, temperature, or electric conductivity. Reflected microwave radiation is affected by the soil moisture and is used for remote sensing in hydrology and agriculture. Portable probe instruments can be used by farmers or gardeners.

Soil moisture sensors refer to sensors that estimate water content. Another class of sensors measure another property of moisture in soils called water potential; these sensors are usually referred to as soil water potential sensors and include tensiometers and gypsum blocks.

Applications:

• Landscape Irrigation
• Agriculture
• Research 
• Gardens

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Usb Wall Outlet Hack

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Phone,Phone,Phone!
Everyone Uses It All the Time,Maybe You Are Using It Right Now As Well!
But Every phone has One Disadvantage!
That It Runs Out Of juice really Fast!
These Days Finding Phone Chargers make Our Heads Spin!
So I Decided To Hack My Ac Wall Outlet Into A Built In Phone Charger!
Now No one Can Remove your Charger From Your Room To Use It!
Moreover It Is Easy To Use As well As make!

Step 1: Gather All the Materials!!

In Order To Hack Your Wall Outlet You Need a Few Things!
1) 5v USB Wall Adapter!(This Will Fit Inside The Ac Outlet!)
http://www.ebay.com/itm/EU-Euro-European-Wall-Char...2) Female Usb Port!(we are Not Going To Remove The Port From The USB Charger,Instead We are going To Connect a New one!)
(You Can Find These Locally!)

3)Wires

Step 2: Precaution!

Make Sure You Turn Off Your Main Power Of your House while opening the Ac Outlet!

Step 3: Removing The Front Panel!

Now We Would need to remove the Front Panel Of Your AC Outlet!
Mine Has 4 Screws In The Front By which I took out the panel!
Now You Will find 3 Color wires in it!
RED=LIVE
BLACK=Neutral
Green=Earth
The Color Might Be Different in Your AC outlet!
If You Don't Understand The Wires Better To Call A Electrician For this!

Step 4: Making Space For The New Usb Port!

Now You Need To Make A Rectangle Cutout For USB Port!

Step 5: Taking Apart The Wall Charger!

Now We Need to Open Up The Wall Chargers Casing and take out its board from it!
Just apply a small amount of pressure near the Pins And it would come out!

Step 6: Replacing Wires On the Circuit Board!

Now The Wires On The Circuit Board Are Really Short So We Need To extend Them, You Can do that by replacing them with new wires,Now Instead of Removing the USB from The Board,I Directly Soldered 2 Wires To the usb port on the circuit!
In My Case- Orange=Negative
red= Positive!

Step 7: Wiring Everything Up!

Now I Prepared This Wiring Diagram!
Whole Project Is Based On This!
Now I Soldered The USB wires from the Circuit Board To the Female USB Port!
Make Sure to Solder In Right Polarities!

Step 8: Placing The Components inside!

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Now Apply Some Hot Glue On the Back Of The Circuit Board & Place It Inside The Ac outlet!
Now Twist The Live Wire From The Circuit with the Live of Ac outlet
& Twist the negative wire from the Circuit To Negative Of AC outlet!
Screw The Front Panel Back Into its place!

Step 9: Testing!

Now We Have Successfully hacked our AC outlet Into a AC outlet With Built In USB Charger!

By:  diyfuntech

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Pipe Flow Detector

If you need to detect water movement in a pipe (or air in a duct) from outside the pipe, this may help. This Arduino based device detects temperature changes and closes a relay contact. The pipe or duct has to change temperature when there is a flow for this to operate.

Step 1:

Materials needed for this include:

Arduino Uno

9 volt dc power supply (for the Arduino)

Thermistor

Relay Module for Arduino

Resistor (about 5K)

Misc. wire, solder, heat shrink tubing and mounting hardware

Connect the wires as shown in this schematic. I put the thermistor at the end of 5 feet of #22 wire.

Step 2:

Use the software sketch provided in this step as a starting point.

The software will turn the relay on for ten seconds when a temperature difference is detected, then shut off. This timing (as well as the temperature change required to trigger the relay) can be adjusted in software.

Tape the thermistor to the pipe.

By:  MikeTheMaker

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