I recently built a Pico into a UV water treatment system and it is working perfectly! Living in Devon, we have recently had problems with Cryptosporidiosis in our water supply. A water treatment system costs £300 or more but a 24 volt Klaran LED UVC light alone costs £100 from Digi-key. This needs a 3.3v signal to switch it on and gives a zero volt alert if there is a problem (e.g. if the LED overheats or if the water supply fails), hence the need for a microcontroller. I was able to put the whole system together for under £200 by combining the UV light and Pico with a standard one micron 10 inch filter, a normally closed 12 volt solenoid valve (and 5 volt relay), plus a flow meter and a tap to adjust the flow rates (2 - 3 litres/minute). The Pico controls the flushes before the system can guarantee potable water and shuts down the instant there is a problem (so there is no risk of contaminated water getting into my tanks).
Hi Geoffrey, Thanks for sharing this! Is your project published online? I would love to know how effective it was killing these pests. Did you test before and after the filtering/treatment stages? Hopefully your water/sewage company has managed to clear this up.
@@johnwilson3918 Hi John. No, I haven't published this anywhere. The Pico code was very simple, though now I am seeing how you could enhance it with say a Pico W and an online app. Apparently UV doesn't kill the pests, merely stop them multiplying by damaging their DNA. We have stayed healthy. I don't know any other test!. The water company say they have cleared their supply up.
Love to see a Pico with W to control an RC. There is another UA-camr called Professor Boots that makes RC. It would be awesome to use a Pico for this project.
Would a micropython XL be a an option that includes the most used options and libraries? Instead of importing time, machine etc each time it is already included.
Great question, but there are a number of reasons why what seems look a good idea is actually a bad idea. Adding extra libraries that are not needed actually slows down Python as it is an interpreted language, it would have to search through even more libraries, rather than just what it needs. Also libraries change and get updated, by baking them in we create legacy code that’s it difficult to change without recompiling. It’s generally considered bad programming to add stuff you don’t need and won’t use as it can also create security issues
The Raspberry Pi Pico sounds most interesting. However, I am learning the Raspberry Pi-5 and OpenCV. Is there a good textbook/workbook for the RPi5/GPIO/OpenCV? Thank you.
I recently built a Pico into a UV water treatment system and it is working perfectly! Living in Devon, we have recently had problems with Cryptosporidiosis in our water supply. A water treatment system costs £300 or more but a 24 volt Klaran LED UVC light alone costs £100 from Digi-key. This needs a 3.3v signal to switch it on and gives a zero volt alert if there is a problem (e.g. if the LED overheats or if the water supply fails), hence the need for a microcontroller. I was able to put the whole system together for under £200 by combining the UV light and Pico with a standard one micron 10 inch filter, a normally closed 12 volt solenoid valve (and 5 volt relay), plus a flow meter and a tap to adjust the flow rates (2 - 3 litres/minute). The Pico controls the flushes before the system can guarantee potable water and shuts down the instant there is a problem (so there is no risk of contaminated water getting into my tanks).
Hi Geoffrey, Thanks for sharing this! Is your project published online? I would love to know how effective it was killing these pests. Did you test before and after the filtering/treatment stages? Hopefully your water/sewage company has managed to clear this up.
@@johnwilson3918 Hi John. No, I haven't published this anywhere. The Pico code was very simple, though now I am seeing how you could enhance it with say a Pico W and an online app. Apparently UV doesn't kill the pests, merely stop them multiplying by damaging their DNA. We have stayed healthy. I don't know any other test!. The water company say they have cleared their supply up.
Many thanks Kevin, several very interesting projects here. The video itself is really well done also.
Love to see a Pico with W to control an RC. There is another UA-camr called Professor Boots that makes RC. It would be awesome to use a Pico for this project.
Thank you, Kevin, for all the effort you put into these projects! ❤
My pleasure! Thanks for the feedback!
Would a micropython XL be a an option that includes the most used options and libraries? Instead of importing time, machine etc each time it is already included.
Great question, but there are a number of reasons why what seems look a good idea is actually a bad idea. Adding extra libraries that are not needed actually slows down Python as it is an interpreted language, it would have to search through even more libraries, rather than just what it needs. Also libraries change and get updated, by baking them in we create legacy code that’s it difficult to change without recompiling. It’s generally considered bad programming to add stuff you don’t need and won’t use as it can also create security issues
The Raspberry Pi Pico sounds most interesting. However, I am learning the Raspberry Pi-5 and OpenCV. Is there a good textbook/workbook for the RPi5/GPIO/OpenCV? Thank you.
Is that the right micropython logo? this is great so far by the way.