I have been experimenting with a home built variable capacitor the past few days and have made a discovery, my initial worries about the varience of salt in the water has turned out to be the least of our worries for a reliable means of determining Z height, the difference in water temperature as well as disolved solids in the water have a huge effect on the capacitors feed back I have however begun work on a work arround, an additional sensor array that is to be used to factor in all the veriables and constantly automatically calibrate the capacitor.

I am trying to design this whole system on a budget as well as trying to design the parts in such a way that it is possible to laser cut many of the pieces however, the final system is going to require a microprocessor and possibly some software for calibration, therein lays the problem, building the prototype isn't that much of a problem yet (I still have a little bit of research to do) but my programming skills are nearly non-existant, so I am comming to the forum to see if there is anyone interested in assisting on the software side of things, so far it looks like the build my be around $50 to build (but like I said, there is still a little more work to be done) I may also require some help with the electronics side for the final circuit.

anyone willing to lend a hand please let me know and we will see what we can do