This is an amazing piece of tech: it’s essentially a piece of waxed paper with a resistor in it. Dunk it in liquid. The resistance changes as the liquid level changes. Very cool.

But it’s seriously fragile, as the folks at Milone Tech who make it emphasize, and as the folks at Adafruit who sell it also emphasize. The tiny little leads that come from the strip won’t take soldering, and the net is full of many warnings not to bend it, fold it, and presumably, not to spindle or mutilate it.

Adafruit sells it with a little header into which the sensor’s leads fit. I puzzled over how to deal with this floppy, breakable tool. I heard online someone talking vaguely about mounting it, so I did.

I got a rigid plastic sheet from a crafts store, cut a piece 18″x3″, and used double-sided tape to attach the sensor to the plastic at the top of the sensor. I soldered wires to the header, covered the connections with heatshrink, and fit the header on the leads. I secured the header to the plastic with a bit of hot glue, and the leads to the plastic with duct tape and a little wrap of wire tie.

I’m really happy with the result. I can clamp the plastic to a 5 gal bucket (the container holding the liquid I plan to monitor), and movement in the leads as I move pieces around, connect them, etc., doesn’t perturb the header, let alone the sensor. The header, leads, double-sided tape, and duct tape should be above the liquid, but even so, they’re all pretty robust to water. Great! Now all I have to do is use it.