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Originally Posted by DrMemory
Many years ago I saw a product anouncement for a flow meter that used optical sensors. I don't remember the name of the company and I have no idea if they are still around. I've thought about this many times since I got into water cooling since I don't like most of the intrusive methods used to measure flow rate. Using optical mouse sensors is an interesting idea. Getting the needed data out of the optical sensor may not be easy since it would require reverse engineering the communications prototcol and outputed "mouse movement" information so it could be turned into flow rate information.
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I use the
Swissflow SF800 flowsensor since 3 years now.
It is an optical (Infrared) flowsensor for flowrates from 0.5 to 20LPM and has an accuracy of 1% and a K-value of 6000 (pulses/liter/minute). Connexions are 3/8" BSP and its ID is about 10mm.
See more on my
webpage.
The output signal is an open collector square wave signal from 50 to 2000Hz (for 0.50 to 20.00LPM flow), so display of the flow is just a matter of measuring the frequency and putting the decimal point on the right place.
I also developped a
frequencymeter with display for it:
The in the schematic used 74C925 counter chip is now obsolete and quit difficult to obtain, but I redesigned it with a (cheaper) 4553 counter and 4543 decoder/driver.
Mounted in my Lian Li PC-70 (it's the one displaying 4.35LPM):
My latest contact with Swissflow was a couple of months ago, price for the SF800 is 50 Euro/piece without taxes (25 Euro/piece for 5000 pieces
).