Near Intersection of I-35 & I-90 Southern Mn. | I have a homemade system that works fine for us. We have an unusual situation due to the evolution of the drying setup. We have two wet bins. The old one is used as a secondary wet bin. It is extremely useful for us to know the level in each bin.
I used 5 Deere combine grain tank sensors mounted inside each of the wet bins. I fabricated special brackets that mount on a bin sheet bolt for each sensor. I removed another bin bolt and replaced it with a 1/8' pipe nipple near each sensor. The nipple would almost fit in the bin sheet hole but needed to be reamed out a bit. Since it was a bit difficult to work inside the bins when empty, we filled the bin and then stopped at various times to install each sensor as the level decreased. That did take some time but only needed to be done once.
This nipple is held in place with a pipe thread nut on the inside and outside of the bin. The nipple creates a hollow bolt of sorts. This allows an entrance point for the wires to the sensor. Since the Deere sensors use a two pole weatherpak connector, I made a custom wiring harness that goes on the outside of the bin with various branches that go through the nipples to the sensors. I crimped the appropriate pins to each branch. Once the wires were pushed through the nipples, the inside guy could put the weatherpak plastic shell on and connect the branch to the sensor.
The wiring harness leads to a bar graph of sorts that consists of five truck clearance lights. These are mounted on a board that is mounted vertically to the outside of the bin. The bottom four are yellow with the top is red. I have one of these bar graph indicators on each bin. The system runs on 12 V DC from an old two-way radio power supply. This works out fine since the switches and clearance lights are designed for 12V.
This allows us to easily determine the level in each bin. This has worked well for several years now. |
overhead bin level indication
