Doppler Flow Meters

Jul 04, 2010 4 Replies

If you have ever seen the Kill-a-Watt meter to track electric use of home appliances, you can undertsand why I was hoping for a cheap doppler meter to track liquid flow noninvasively inside piper using sound waves. I recently got a ten dollar sonic stud finder, and suspect the only reason this device can't track flow is software and not hardware. Are we likely to see home doppler meters any time soon?



- = - Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist

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On Sun, 4 Jul 2010 21:35:21 +0000 (UTC), snipped-for-privacy@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com wrote Re Doppler Flow Meters:

Wow! That's an amazing web site.

No.

There are industrial flow meter solutions (doppler, transit-time, mechanical, etc).

There is no demand for a home version.

I'm some-what inclined to do home automation, and the only thing I would do along those lines would be to install a mechanical flow meter where my main water line enters the house. I'd only be interested in total water flow, not the flow to individual branches (bathrooms, sinks, toilets, etc). I'd probably install a pressure and temperature sensor at my main water supply point first before I'd ever install a flow sensor.

Mechanical flow meters are also known as turbines and rotometers.

Here's some examples:

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I've worked with doppler and transit-time flow meters used to measure blood flow in biomedical applications, so I know how they work and why they are the preferred tool to measure blood flow in arteries in living subjects. But for home water consumption, I wouldn't go with ultrasonic.

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Hard to read though with all that cluttered blue-blobby background.

What bits I could see sems to be rather narcssiistic view of somebody, by himself?

Don't think I'll bother to access it again and have not bookmarked it!

BTW there are AIUI such 'no moving parts' flow meters; no idea of the costs, their accuracy or other details. But must ask my son who is in that line of business when I next see him.

My utility provided one of those for me.

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