A look inside a fluid flow rate sensor. 

As you can tell from your videos that I comment about, I have started from the oldest on your list and am working my way to modernity. I enjoy your videos so much, it is like I have found a stash of gold. I heard you mentioned by a youtube creator named Steve Summers, who said that almost everything he knows about electronics he learned from your videos. So I had to take a look. With regard to your discussing how only a short while ago these fluid flow sensors were very expensive. Up until I saw your video, that was the mode I was still caught in. I layed out about $70 a few months ago for a meter that really wasn't what I wanted, but it was the closest I could find, and thought the price was good. I will be buying some more reasonably priced ones soon thanks to you. This is the third really intetesting product that I have got out of your videos I have seen so far. Thanks.

I use these sensors for monitoring monitoring the level in the fresh water tanks on my boat. Very handy knowing when I need to find a water point ;) Funnily enough, as you mention, with an Arduino at the core, driving an LCD. Having now had over 16,000 litres of water passed through them, I can say they're as reliable as any "industrial" version I've ever used. They're also reasonably accurate, in my testing down to +/-50ml.

Thanks for sharing the teardown! =)

That's quite nice, the compartment with the little gear thing is completely sealed. The magnet obviously triggers the hall effect sensor through the compartment walls, thus the water never comes into contact with the electronics. Magnets are quite neat fof these applications. They can even be used to apply torque through barries, for an example to drive a propeller that's in water but keeping the motor inside a dry enclosure. Nikko even used magnets in their vintage submarines, to drive the propellers and turning mechanism while keeping the electronics completely sealed. They have quite powerful little magnets.

They may be low cost, but they are pretty reliable. I have some in an ink jet printer ( continuous jet type, not the cheap ones you attach to a PC) and they live in MEK based ink and so far after 5 years of use they have no problems. Though those are made from PTFE castings not nylon.They use the same style of fitting, yours should have come with 2 small stainless steel reinforcing inserts for the tubing for use with more than 1 bar of pressure, otherwise the tube will pop out of the ferrule.

Thank you I search for video like this

i wanted to fix this sensor to my bike to sense the flow of fuel from tank to engine, will it work on that case. please suggest me

I really love urban tech these days. Everything is available! Some dudes I know has these sensors to measure their lanparty beerflow :)

So this thing gives signal of (start) when in rotates and (stop) signal when it stops rotating right???

How would one get this to work? so basically while water is running I would want an led on?

Aaaah, that's interesting. I've always wanted to know how a flow detector worked because there's obviously one or more in a combi boiler and it has to detect water flow when a tap is turned on in order to fire the gas burner. The thing is though..... Around our previous house, we had an under-sink instant gas-fired water heater and that had no electrics in it at all. The only thing I can think of, is the flow detector in that relied on mains water pressure to act on a diaphragm of some kind which then forced closed a gas valve. Upon opening a tap, the mains pressure in the diaphragm dropped-off, thus the gas valve opened and the burner fired. But then..... If the mains water supply was lost, that would mean that there would be no pressure on the diaphragm to stop the gas flow, so that would mean that the gas burner would fire up, the whole thing would boil and explode! So maybe it didn't rely on mains water pressure to keep the gas flow turned off? Quite how that non-electrical instant gas-fired water heater worked inside still remains a mystery, and you know, there's probably an extremely simple mechanism in there which only allows the burner to fire when there's a suitable water flow through the heat exchanger. Hmmm...... Thanx for showing, -BoomBoxDeluxe. _11th April 2015, 14.10_

thank

Sir, Can i use these sensors for petrol flow measurement ?

i had imagined this would be more like a reverse of a peristaltic pump

Will they work with diesel fuel, i wanr to do indicator with arduino how much my tractor is consuming fuel per hour.?

Hi what is the female connector called as?

Will this sensor be accurate for smaller scale applications? for instance determine the amount of metal poured from a 1 liter bottle.

Can we measure airflow with this sensor?

*stops video* it will be the same type of circuitry use in computer fans used to detect the fan speed *starts video* yup, same type

This is not good - I WANT one of those :-D The casing looks as if it's made from Acetal ("Delrin") so chemical resistance might be good (OK with water-based solutions and most hydrocarbons)

Not very accurate, they have upto 20 % error