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I am planning to measure water level in a well, which is about 10 m deep with maximum water level up to 5 m. My plan is to use ultrasonic sensor HC SR04 to measure depth, transmit it via ZigBee to a Raspberry Pi inside my home.
My question is how best to connect HC SR04 to a ZigBee device? Since this sensor will be located inside a well, using minimum parts with lowest power usage would be ideal.
Generally you'd need some component to trigger and power the sensor and read the response. That sensor has a custom response and trigger which makes me doubt there is a standard ZigBee module out there which converts a command to that 10 µs trigger and reports back the response in verbatim. Thus, you'll need some sort of microcontroller with your ZigBee module to perform that task.
I'd probably get that microcontroller, the ZigBee module and a circuit prevent short circuiting on a board outside the well for humidity reasons and lead a four wire cable inside to the sensor. Since the sensor has only four meters of range it has to be very close to the potential high water maximum mark. Putting a small cable inside the well gets the other electronics out of range and puts the ZigBee module in a better position to relay the information to the Raspberry Pi.
Of course, you can also put the MCU, the ZigBee module and the sensor in a water-proof casing inside the well. Which might give the ZigBee module problems though. However that depends a lot on your building.
