Water Watcher

Project Conception and Evolution

Around the time of Christmas 2019, my family and I did what most families were doing and we went out to get a Christmas tree to decorate the season! My wife is fairly particular about having a nice full tree for Christmas. I can't blame her for that, it definitely makes the tree feel more regal and commands attention from anyone in the room. The problem I ran into while setting up the tree was that the water reservoir was really hard to get to to check what level it was at. The tree branches were simply too thick to get in and see what was going on. There had to be a better way to make sure our new tree didn't die within only a few days.

My engineering brain kicked in almost immediately and the WaterWatcher idea was born! I knew I could design a simple PCB that could look just like another ornament on the Christmas tree. The only difference would be that it would have a probe running from it down into the water to test for water levels. It has surface mount LED's to indicate the water level in the reservoir. The LED's are different colors to show a visual progression of the water levels decreasing. These LED's start at blue when the water level is full and move down through green, yellow, and red when the reservoir is empty. The board is battery powered with a CR2032 button cell battery and has a switch to turn the the board on and off. Future versions of this project might add a buzzer to alert the user when the levels are low.

I built a prototype which was a complete success which I also ended up using for the Christmas 2019 season while I worked on a better design for the WaterWatcher. My kids loved checking the water levels all season and I never once had to get under the tree to see when I needed to add water!