[TriEmbed] RPi Project

[Grawburg]

One of the programs the museum regularly presents to schools and other groups is called the Alaskan Pipeline Challenge. Students must construct a "pipeline" that allows for caribou migration under a portion of the pipeline and is able to avoid ecologically sensitive areas and yet allow a marble to go from the start to the finish.  I offered to add another part to he program to introduce instrumentation and control through the use of a motorized ball valve. The valve will actually be controlled by a Raspberry Pi that will activate a 12VDC relay connected to the valve actuator. That's the easy part. Here's the more involved part.

The valve will not have anything actually going through it, but I want to simulate a flow meter and a pressure gauge. The idea being that a pipeline leak could be detected by a change in oil flow rate or drop in line pressure.  I wonder, would using a pot to vary voltage which will be converted to digital for the RPi with an appropriate ADC (an MCP3008, probably, which Adafruit supplies with all the instructions) be the simplest method?  This seems pretty straight forward and the Python code fits well into the whole project. A drop in pressure would automatically close the valve, for example.


Thanks,
Brian Grawburg