MSGID: <10fk4vk$25alv$1@dont-email.me> f1790eca
REPLY: <10fiuls$1svk0$1@dont-email.me> 07e6d34d
PID: PyGate 1.5
TID: PyGate/Linux 1.5
CHRS: ASCII 1
TZUTC: 0000
REPLYADDR tnp@invalid.invalid
REPLYTO 3:633/10 UUCP
On 18/11/2025 23:15, Daniel James wrote:
> On 18/11/2025 12:08, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> As part of my enhancements to the home controller, I want to send 
>> email warnings of low heating oil level.
> 
> This sounds rather like something I have been planning to do. AAMOI how 
> are you measuring the oil level?
> 

Oh. I designed a board with

- a Pi Pico W.
- a three pin temperature sensor ( TMP36) to monitor outside temperature
- an ultrasonic transmitter/receiver ( HCRS04) on it
- a nano power timer that (Was a sparkfun nano power switch  TPL5110 
until I blew it up and replaced it with a sub-board  with an Adafruit 
TPL5110 Low Power Timer ) wakes up every 2 hours, tries to make contact 
with the wifi, sends a short message to the server, and then commits 
suicide and shuts the timer down again.

Board designs all available if you want.

Also source code, suitably modified to remove my wifi password

At the far end is a Pi Zero with a very simple daemon running under 
inetd, to listen to the call and write the data to a file in a ramdisk.

A web server then parses that data and calculates the oil level and 
displays it. (along with room temps and central heating states which it 
also controls)

The intention is to run code under cron as well, and send warning emails.

I may not bother to fix the DNS problem since it seems to resend the 
mail within the hours successfully.

-- 
No Apple devices were knowingly used in the preparation of this post.


--- PyGate Linux v1.5
 * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
SEEN-BY: 105/81 106/201 128/187 129/14 305 153/7715 154/110 218/700
SEEN-BY: 226/30 227/114 229/110 112 200 206 275 300 317 400 426 428
SEEN-BY: 229/470 616 664 700 705 266/512 291/111 292/854 320/219 322/757
SEEN-BY: 342/200 396/45 460/58 633/10 280 414 418 420 422 509 2744
SEEN-BY: 712/848 770/1 902/26 2320/105 5020/400 5075/35
PATH: 633/10 280 229/426