Universal photo-electronic level sensor

A wide range of industry and scientific applications require continuous measurement of granular or liquid material levels. For environmental science, these include snow depth, water level, and soil erosion measurements. The modern market offers many different sensors, some of which can be used for these measurements, but many of them are expensive and not autonomous. Current market models also propose difficulties in organizing scalable measurement campaigns and limit coverage of large areas. For example, common snow depth and water level sensors are ultrasonic, which requires substantial power, a datalogger, $1000 cost, special mounting, and provides only a single point measurement. This immediately presents itself as both a problematic and expensive route when trying to organize observations across a large area, such as with snow distribution and redistribution. We present Universal photo-electronic level sensor that can be used to measure changes in levels of a media measuring amount of light received by exposed and covered parts of sensor. The intended use are snow depth, water level, and soil erosion measurements.