By: Brett Stoddard
Before I got started designing the SMT sap flow, I built and tested the probe sap flow sensor popularized by Grainer. This design popular with researchers probably because of its inexpensive BOM ( ~$10/sensor ) and promisingly low labor ( 1 hour/sensor ) which puts the total price at ( ~$60/sensor ).
When I replicated several of these probes I found significant difficulty in making them. The 36 gauge wires are especially difficult to work with and the nichrome wire heater probe was almost impossible to wind to a high enough resistance. For the 7 I built, only 2 were usable enough to record meaningful data. This is not a process I would recommend to anyone.
Heater and sensor probe design from Davis et al published in 2012 in Sensors Open Acess Journal.
Here is the BOM used by Camden Lowrance in his University of Georga thesis in 2014 and the simplified one I created for this project. Camden’s includes a base station and mine does not.
The biggest difference is that I used a thermocouple amplifier chip instead of building my own. This greatly simplified the design and made fabrication a lot easier. I chose an Adafruit Universal Thermocouple Amplifier MAX31856 Breakout board. I made sure to set it to the Type-T setting. Adafruit has an excellent guide on how to use one of these on their website here.
Posted by Brett Stoddard