Is anyone monitoring their water softner for salt level?
I thought that I had seen someone build a sensor that monitors the light that starts flashing when its getting low but I cant seem to find that.
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Now this would be good. Watching with bated breath.
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Homeseer has that HS-FS100-L Zwave device which can watch for a light, and send a signal when there is a light. Maybe that can be used in your situation. Z-Wave Sensors For Smart Home Hubs & Controllers | HomeSeer
Mine doesn't have that flashing light, so another solution would be good. I have seen homebrewed sonar sensors mentioned before, but that is way beyond my capabilities.
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That z-wave sensor looks promising.
@bcopeland, any idea if this will work with Hubitat? I assume it would need a device driver, they have one listed for smart things.
I'm using a Dome water sensor with the extension wire. (Any one with an extension wire should do). After I fill the salt I put the sensor wire on top. Once it hits the brine and gets wet it sends a message to our phones. Pull it out, pour salt in, put sensor back on top. Rinse and repeat. Not seeing any oxidation on the copper contacts yet.
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+1 to @bobbles for using "bated". I thought that poor word had long been forgotten by the denizens of the internet who would rather bait their breath than a fishing hook! 
S.
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Went ahead and ordered the homeseer sensor. Hopefully it works or I can port the SmartThings driver.
I've just ordered a sensor with an external probe as well.
Can't wait for it to turn up and test it.
Automated low salt alarm, who'd have thought it........ 
Thanks @rlithgow1. 
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There are some old threads on here about people putting sticks with contacts in the brine tank... Im sure I'm not the 1st person to do it.
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Check this one:
I think this is one of the ones I came across
I got the Homeseer sensor installed and it paired with the built in driver. After I selected the light sensor a child device was created.
The switch is on now with the light being on. Is the expected behavior that it switches off with a blinking light?
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Not necessarily, though in my experience it doesn't work well with blinking lights. The best you can do is adjust parameter 5, the full extent of which you can see in the manual, but Hubitat's driver exposes this as the "Light Detection Delay (detect blinking)" preference, so you can try different values there and see what works best. I wouldn't be surprised if this only mattered in AC (not battery) mode, either.
I've setup an ESP8266 D1 Mini with an Ultrasonic Module HC-SR04 Distance Sensor. It works really well. The total cost was about $7.
I'm using HA for monitoring, but the device has an API and a web server, so I think someone could probably write a driver for it.
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Following the advice here I purchased a water sensor with a flying lead and put it in my water softener. Today I got an alert.
The salt was low.
Thanks for the advice @rlithgow1 .
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Which sensor did you get 
This one.
When paired it was found as a Device.
Allocated it the built in "Generic Zigbee Moisture Sensor" and re-paired it again.
Working fine.
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To maintain a water softener's efficiency you should never let the salt level go below 25%. If you are using a water sensor for alerts, the salt level is more than likely going beyond this lower limit.
I've had my salt bridge and become concrete-like. That was with pellets though. Ever since then, I use a minimum of salt crystals.
