Ingenuity from laziness, sounds like it could be protecting from huge amounts of water damage, and it could be. But, my dogs water runs low for an hour or two before we notice- perfect simple IoT project.
I built it. My dog water bowl sends an sms when it needs to be filled. I plan to make a proper guide. Used the Particle with power shield, and a IFTTT trigger to send an SMS. Very low power.
Archive of earlier ideas, possibly future work:
To detect absence of water, I’m thinking two wires that form a switch to ground, normally closed and you’d read 0 when there isn’t water you’d read 1, connected to an interrupt that can wake from sleep. How about a capacitive liquid level sensor, like the one I’d imagine is in the Pryme?
I’ll have to play with web hooks and see what integration will work, ideally something that alerts my phone. This could lead to integration to other things.
After a working prototype, there would be an effort to design something nice. The components I’ll use will be small already. How long power is provided should be alright with the interrupt, maybe instead of LiPo, I’ll use 4x 1.2V Eneloop batteries that would probably last longer and be safer.
This would be a good project for the Oaks I haven’t used. I got them not really knowing much, but know I know they were an early (at least when I got them) ESP8266 board. I’ve already worked with other Particle stuff so they use the same web IDE I’m used to.