Rain Sensor?

Support
1

Does anyone know of a solution for getting the rainfall quantity into a PI?

I have an old commercial (cheap) weather station which displays wind, rain, inside and outside temp, However the rain data stopped displaying so I took the gauge apart. It is a seesaw of two small cups, the count of ‘oscillations’ against time provides the measurement.
If there isn’t a ‘new’ solution available I might try and convert my old bought gauge.

2

I do believe they call that a tipping bucket rain gauge
https://www.weathershack.com/static/ed-tipping-bucket-rain-gauge.html
Maybe this will help.
https://pi.gate.ac.uk/posts/2014/01/25/raingauge/

3

Thanks for the links, that is what it is, a tipping bucket.
RIP Maplin!
The one I have is a magnet and reed switch but I think it is the RF section that has failed.
If I am to get it working with a PI I will need to send the pulses by WiFi, either as they happen or the count for the last minute or five. All working off a couple of AA cells.
This could keep me busy!

4

An Arduino or Feather may be a better choice for this. They will use less power and be power failure tolerate. Feathers have a LIPO battery connector and charge circuit built in.
Anything like a Pi won’t work very well off of 3 AA’s. You’ll get constant undervolt warnings. And using 4 AA’s will fry it.

5

Alternatively I could use the old fashioned system, cable.
Cable from the gauge to a little electronics to interface with the PI and count pulses against time, correct for collection area.

6

Something like the Automation Hat or pHat may be the way to interface to the Pi.


7

Thanks, yes they would do it, I’ll start designing!

8

OK now ready to add the Rain Sensor to my setup. Currently I have this output from my tweaked version of nopheads code,

MyEnviro
MyEnviro2079×1339 187 KB

I have also managed to get the data to Grafana via InfluxDB, makes very pretty visuals and I am still learning how to set it up. This is an example of the Particle data graphed.
Particles
Particles3603×699 109 KB

For connecting my tipping bucket rain sensor I found this useful link: https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/build-your-own-weather-station/8
The python code it suggests is:

from gpiozero import button
rain_sensor = Button(26)
bucket_vol = 10.0 #10ml
bucket_size = 0.12732395 #mm of rainfall
count = 0

def bucket_tipped():
global count
count = count + 1
print (count * bucket_size)

def reset_rainfall():
global count
count = 0

rain_sensor.when_pressed = bucket_tipped

Which seems to be a good starting point.
Has any on else gone down this route and have some advice/tips?
Thanks

9

The above seems to work if the import button is changed to import Button.
I will see how well tonight with the forecasted rain!