Low pellet alarm/monitor

[briansol]

IMO, the best or most reliable thing to use would be to use a scale of some sort. weight will always be weight regardless of fines or dirtyness.

It won't be perfect, and bridging may cause false positives, but if its bridged, then you'd want the alarm to sound too, so maybe that's a good thing. It could be as simple as double-sided taping it into a flat part of the hopper, and figure out how much that area weighs full VS how much it should weigh when it should yell at you.

 

[Hoot23]

My youngest son is 16 months. He has to look in the pellet hopper everytime we go to the basement. He starts smiling and running his fingers thru the pellets.

We then proceed to the stacks of pellets where he sits onto the bags smacking them and laughing. He is a pellet piglet in training.

My son is the same way. He's 3 and he has to go with me every load we pick up, wether it be for us or my sister. And every time I need to put some in the hopper he puts his slippers on right with me and we take a trip to the basement. Hope he's doesn't get as obsessed as I am.

 

[exoilburner]

My Harman has a low fuel sensor located near the bottom of one pellet hopper wall. It has a red LED that is on all the time. The fines that accumulate on it do not seem to bother it; it has always indicated a low pellet condition with no problems. It feeds a low fuel LED indicator on the room thermostat. The Harman Part Number for sensor is 4-20-03835. It connects thru the control board.

If you are interested let me know and I'll try and find some commercial numbers on the sensor itself. It must be a standard commercial part.