Industrial LoRaWAN® Ultrasonic Level Sensor

It measures the level of a liquid or a solid from above, without contact, and sends the reading over LoRaWAN® to a gateway kilometres away. Water tanks, sumps, STP and ETP tanks, manholes, storm drains, canals, diesel and chemical tanks, silos and waste bins are the usual points. The MacRay LUS X1 covers 3 to 450 cm and runs for years on an 8 Ah battery.

3 cm to 450 cm from the sensor face, with a 3 cm blind zone and 0.1 cm resolution. Mount the face at least 3 cm above the highest level the contents can reach, including foam and splash, and the reading at full and empty is confirmed in the Maya app before the clip is fixed.

The datasheet gives 0.1 cm resolution, a 60° beam and a 100 ms response. The absolute figure on a site depends on the surface, the air temperature in the tank and the mounting, which is why the full and empty points are set in the Maya app on the tank itself. Tell us the tank and the contents and we say what to expect; for a reading that must hold to a fraction of a percent over a wide temperature swing, ask about the application before you order.

The sensor measures the distance from its face to the surface. Enter the mounting height in the Maya app and the level is the height minus that distance; the dashboard converts level to volume from the tank shape. Fill level in a bin or a silo is the same figure the other way round.

Enter the mounting height in the Maya app and the sensor reports level as height minus distance. On the dashboard, percentage is level divided by the usable depth, and litres is level times the tank's cross-section, or a strapping table for a horizontal cylinder. Worked example: sensor face 2.10 m above the floor, reading 0.60 m, level 1.50 m; in a tank with 1.80 m of usable depth that is 83 %, and at 3.1 m² of floor area, 4,650 litres.

Yes. The measurement is an echo from the surface, so the sensor never touches the contents and there is no probe to corrode or foul. For a chemical tank, check the transducer material against the vapour in the tank before ordering; for a fuel tank where a probe in the tank is wanted instead, the MacSync LCS X1 capacitive sensor is on its own page.

No. The MacRay LUS X1 looks down at the surface through an opening in the top, which is how a tank with a lid, a sump cover or a manhole is read. Sensors that measure through the bottom of a tank are a different product class with coupling paste and wall-thickness limits; for a sealed tank with no opening, ask us about the options.

Yes, with care. A solid settles at an angle, so the sensor is centred in the roof and kept out of the fill stream and the dust plume, and the reading is the distance to the surface under the sensor. Fine dust in the air weakens the echo, so a reading just after filling can lag.

Foam and heavy vapour absorb the echo and turbulence scatters it, so readings get noisier. Mount the sensor away from inlets, aerators and stirrers, use sampling so several readings are averaged on the server, and set alert limits with some margin. A tank that is permanently foamed is a case to discuss before ordering.

The 60° cone widens with distance: about 5.2 m across at 450 cm and about 1.2 m across at 1 m. In a narrow tank the sensor is centred and mounted so that the walls stay outside the cone over the range in use; a wall inside the cone returns an early echo and a wrong level. The beam-pattern page in the manual shows the cone.

A fixed reading of, say, 70 cm in a 3 m tank is almost always an echo from something inside the cone at that distance: a ladder rung, an inlet pipe, a tank seam or the edge of the opening. Move or aim the sensor so that nothing but the surface is inside the 60° cone, confirm with the live distance in the Maya app, and the reading follows the level again.

Three usual causes. The surface is inside the 3 cm blind zone, which happens when a tank is brim full and the sensor sits too low: mount it higher. The surface is beyond 450 cm or returns no echo, which happens over a dry, sloped solid or a foamed surface: check the mounting and the surface. Or the decoder on the network server is missing or wrong, so the raw payload is shown instead of the distance: add the codec.

A film of condensation on the transducer face weakens the echo until it clears. The face is rated IP67 for exactly this environment, and mounting the sensor so that the face points straight down lets droplets fall off. In a closed, warm tank, a short morning gap in readings is the usual symptom; sampling and a sensible alert margin cover it.

The speed of sound in air rises with temperature, by about 0.17 % per degree, so a sensor in direct sun over a tank reads slightly differently at noon and at night. Mount it shaded, keep the measuring range short where possible, and let the dashboard average readings; where a tight absolute figure matters, tell us the temperature swing on the site.

A cast-iron cover or a steel lid attenuates the signal, sometimes badly. Sumps under a concrete slab and manholes with a grating usually work; a fully closed iron cover may not. Check the link at the exact mounting point with the Maya app's network test before fixing the clip, mount the gateway high and near the chambers, and ask about the MacTalk variant where a single tank needs to reach a single controller rather than a gateway.

The mounting clip screws to a lid, a wall or a gantry using the drilling template in the box, or straps to a pole or a rail with zip ties, and the sensor slides in and locks with the face pointing straight down. Keep the face at least 3 cm above the maximum level and the 60° cone clear of walls, ladders, inlets and floats. The mounting guide is in the downloads.

The datasheet estimates for the 8 Ah Li-SOCl₂ cell are about a year at 5-minute reports, about 2 years at 15-minute reports and 3+ years at hourly reports. A threshold alert adds an uplink only when a limit is crossed, so a tank that reports hourly and alerts on its limits sits at the long end.

Heat raises the self-discharge of any lithium cell, so a sensor baking on a steel lid in the sun will not reach the datasheet figure, which assumes a moderate temperature. Mount it shaded or on the underside of the opening, and prefer hourly reports with a threshold alert for tanks that change slowly. The housing is rated to +80 °C; the battery simply lasts longer when it is cooler.

Yes. Open the housing, unplug the 8 Ah cell from the board, plug in a cell of the same type and close it again; the sensor stays in its clip over the tank. The procedure is in the user manual.

From the internal antenna at 23 dBm, about 2 km across a built-up site and up to 8 km with a clear line of sight to the gateway. Tank tops are good mounting points because they are high; sumps and chambers are the ones to test. The gateway and coverage calculator on this site works out gateway positions for a site.

Far more than a site usually has. A level reading is a few bytes every 15 minutes or an hour, and a gateway listens on several channels at once, so a water board's tanks, sumps and chambers across a ward are limited by radio coverage, not by gateway capacity. The gateway and coverage calculator on this site gives the count for an area and an interval.

The LoRaWAN® variant needs one, and any standard LoRaWAN gateway will do: Macnman's MacLink Gen-2 on a mast outdoors, the Setu X1 indoors, or a gateway you already operate. If a tank only needs to reach a pump controller and there is no network on the site, order the MacTalk variant (SKU 8201) instead and skip the gateway altogether.

Not by itself; it reads and reports. On a network, the server's rules act on the level. Without a network, the MacTalk variant sends the level to a MacSet controller, whose relays start or stop the pump on the high and low limits, kilometres from the tank, with no gateway in between.

Any standard one. The MacRay LUS X1 is a LoRaWAN® v1.0.4 device with OTAA activation and AES-128 encryption, so it joins ChirpStack, The Things Stack, Orbiwise, Netmore or a private server. From the server the decoded reading travels on by MQTT or HTTPS to your dashboard or SCADA.

Yes. Macnman supplies codecs for The Things Stack, ChirpStack and Milesight gateways; the downloads section links the Macnman decoder repository, and support sends the MacRay LUS X1 codec for your network server with the order if it is not yet listed there.

In the free Macnman Maya app over Bluetooth: pair with the sensor, enter the mounting height, set the reporting interval from 1 minute to 24 hours, choose periodic, threshold or sampling reporting, and enter the high and low level limits. The live distance shows on the phone while you aim the sensor. The interval can be changed later by a downlink from the network server.

Periodic sends a reading at a fixed interval. Threshold sends an uplink the moment the level crosses a limit you set, which is how an overflow or a dry run is caught between reports. Sampling takes several readings between uplinks and sends them together, so the record keeps a 5-minute trend while the battery pays for one uplink every half hour. Most tanks run periodic plus threshold.

It can be switched to Class C in the Maya app, but a level sensor rarely needs it: alerts go out on their own and the only common command is an interval change, which Class A delivers after the next report. Class C keeps the radio listening and would cut the 8 Ah cell's life, so leave the default unless a downlink must arrive within seconds.

Ultrasonic suits most water, wastewater, fuel and solid tanks up to about 4.5 m: non-contact, battery powered, no part in the liquid. Radar is chosen for heavy foam, vapour or very tall vessels. A submersible pressure transmitter reads from the bottom and needs a cable and power. A float switch gives only a high or low state. For a tank farm, sumps and drains spread over a site with no power, a battery LoRaWAN® ultrasonic sensor is usually the lowest-cost route to a continuous reading.

A GSM sensor needs a SIM, a data plan and operator coverage at every tank, and the modem drains a battery far faster. LoRaWAN® needs one gateway on a high point and then reaches every tank, sump and chamber in range for years on a battery, with no subscription per device. For one isolated tank with no gateway nearby, GSM can still make sense; for a ward or a plant, LoRaWAN is the cheaper network to run.

Both: it reports the distance to a surface, and with the mounting height entered it reports the level. The same unit is used as a tank level sensor, a drain depth gauge, a bin fill-level sensor and a stock-level sensor on a silo. It is not a hobby distance module, a radar transmitter or a pressure sensor.

No. A LoRaWAN ultrasonic water meter measures flow through a pipe; the MacRay LUS X1 measures the level in a tank, a sump or a channel from above. The two are often searched together because both use ultrasound and LoRaWAN®. For consumption, pair a level sensor on the tank with a Modbus meter read by the MacSync LX1 converter.

The transducer face is IP67 and the glass-filled nylon body is IP55, and the sensor works from −40 to +80 °C, so it goes over an open tank, under a lid or on a bridge soffit as it is. Mount it so the face points straight down and the body is not in standing water.

96 × 96 × 28 mm and about 110 g, in a matte white glass-filled nylon housing with an internal antenna. It sits on a tank lid, under a manhole cover or on a bin, and the supplied clip takes a zip tie on a pole.

Three, all on the 8 Ah battery with the same sensing. 8200 MacRay-L-UL-BS-X1 is the LoRaWAN® variant for tanks, sumps and drains reporting to a server through a gateway. 8201 MacRay-M-UL-BS-X1 is the MacTalk variant that talks straight to a MacSet controller or another Macnman device with no gateway. 8202 MacRay-B-UL-BS-X1 reads over Bluetooth to a phone, for spot checks and commissioning.

Yes. The sensor was listed as the MacRay LU4 on earlier pages, listings and the old datasheet; the current datasheet calls it the MacRay LUS X1, variant MacRay-L-UL-BS-X1, SKU 8200. The figures on this page are from that datasheet: 3 to 450 cm, IP67 head on an IP55 body, 8 Ah battery, 96 × 96 × 28 mm. Older listings that quote 0 to 5 m, IP65, 12 Ah or 19 Ah, or 140 g describe earlier units.

It ships on the IN865 plan (865 to 867 MHz) with a WPC compliant radio, and it is designed, assembled and tested by Macnman Technologies in Pune. RoHS conformant. The same sensor goes abroad on RU864, EU868, US915 or AU915.

The sensor, its mounting clip and screws, a printed manual and the warranty card. The IP68 cable extender and a power adapter are separate line items. Hardware is covered by Macnman's two-year limited warranty against manufacturing defects, counted from the invoice; the battery is a consumable outside the warranty.

On the figures the manufacturers publish, the EM310-UDL and the DDS45-LB are the same 3 to 450 cm class as the MacRay LUS X1; the EM500-UDL reaches 5 or 10 m on a 19 Ah cell. The MacRay LUS X1 differs around the sensing: a −40 to +80 °C operating range where the others stop at +60 or +65 °C, a level threshold with an event uplink, MacTalk and Bluetooth variants with no gateway, setup from a phone app rather than NFC or AT commands, and manufacture in India for IN865 with support from Pune. The comparison table on this page gives the figures and the full comparison page lists the sources.