A thought on a very useful mod...

[Ninth]

Mind you, it's very late and I've been reading the aeneid all night, so I'm not in a correct state of mind, so feel free to shoot this down, but a thought about flowrate monitors.

All the ones I've seen so far are merely visual. Allright, why not have an electronic one that doesn't require some massive setup, parts to an expensive system, or the like? It doesn't honestly seem that hard. Flow rate generates fluid movement, which would theoreticall keep one end of a switch shaped like some sort of fin pushed in the direction of the flow. However, assuming the flow stopped, the fin (presumably attached by some means of metal spring or the like, allowing for flexability) would move back into place, connecting a circuit. This relies on three things. One, the fluid in the circuit is non-conductive enough so the tiny amount of voltage across the switch wouldn't fry things, or connect even at a distance. Two, that one could cut a tube to build this apparatus inside it (or build something out of acryllic) and seal it all up effectively enough while still maintaing circuit integrity.

After that, the process would be simple. Connect a red LED< a little buzzer, basically any alert you want in series with the switch, as well as even say just a 9v or something, and Bam, electronic alert flowrate sensor. Once my setup comes (or perhaps even before, so I can judge it's realism) I might try my hand at this. I'm intreagued...

Any thoughts?

[jhanby]

This would be a good idea and would probably work. One problem though, what happened if you turned of your computer and the flow stopped then ? You would need some sort of override button to stop it sounding constantly when the computer was off.

Duh or you could just power it off a molex inside the computer sorry me being a bit dim there

Good idea though.

[EmAn]

They actually have some of these although they are are to find that have barbs on them and will shut down a system if a pump failed or alert you if the pump failed all powered from the PSU iteself so there would be no need for an override button...

It is somewhat difficult to make on your own but it can be done!

[Jolly-Swagman]

You could use an inline flow pressure switch and connect to a relay and LED/Buzzer that could if needed shutdown PC in the event of a pump failure

[Ninth]

You could use an inline flow pressure switch and connect to a relay and LED/Buzzer that could if needed shutdown PC in the event of a pump failure

Inline flow pressure switches, they have those? That would be niftey, as it's basically what I'm going for. I was looking around on various sites, even wc botique sites, and most of them were these massive "flow rate, valve, pressure switch" huge things that also required some sort of custom application and pump to work.