Hi
I have wanted to log rain fall for some time in connection with our solar powered irrigation system. I asked on the forum about using a wireless Oregon gauge we already have but hooking it up to the emoncms radio system seemed like a lot of work. I then considered hacking an emontx into the Oregon but soon realised there would be waterproofing issues.
I then found a rain gauge available as a spare at a very reasonable price.
Available here:- http://www.radioworld.co.uk
Search for 8681-RGC
It has a long cable with just 2 wires. The device contains what I think is a reed switch that sends a pulse every time one of 2 little buckets fills and tips the second bucket into the monitoring position. I already have the pulses reading into a battery powered emontx. The next step is calibration and then setting up the feed. I already have a waterproof emontx monitoring outside temperature. I hope to be able to combine rain gauging and temperature reading into a single unit.
I thought this may be of interest to others.
Regards
Ian
Re: Emoncms and Rain Gauge
Hi Ian, nice find.
I bought the whole sensor lot (less the base station) for 40 euro shipped, and then paid less than 10 for a rfm01 receiver to read the data .. And i didn't have a waterproof emontx on hand. But 10 pounds is really hard to beat as a base price...
It would be great if when you're done you posted the code you wrote to keep as a reference.
Regards
Mattia
Re: Emoncms and Rain Gauge
The Radio world shipping adds nearly 50% to the price.
The same part is available including UK shipping for £8 here
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Spare-Rain-Gauge-For-Use-With-Wireless-Weather...
Bob
Re: Emoncms and Rain Gauge
This looks really interesting, I would be keen t see this work, and for a pounds from Maplin this is a real bargin.
Re: Emoncms and Rain Gauge
Hey Guys,
Has anyone managed to get this working and connected to an emonTX v2, I would like to do this but not really sure where to start, I have the rain gauage, so next step would be to connect to the emonTX, I assume to 1 of the analog inputs ?.
Any help would be appreciated, with some sketch information too.
Thanks in advance.
Re: Emoncms and Rain Gauge
Hi
It needs to be connected to a digital input. I found I had to use hardware debounce as the reed switch is very noisy.
I can upload my sketch if it is of interest ( its not elegant but it seems to work )
Regards
Ian
Re: Emoncms and Rain Gauge
I would be very interested to see your sketch Ian - I have one of these rain gauges from an old weather station and would love to hook it up to an Arduino to monitor rain fall.
Cheers,
Ben
Re: Emoncms and Rain Gauge
It needs to be connected to a digital input. I found I had to use hardware debounce as the reed switch is very noisy.
I've just had the same issue except whilst reading a microswitch. I overcame contact bounce by using this software example, which is simple and worked very well, and stops the state from changing for a predetermined time. I found 20 milliseconds worked fine for me.
Paul
Re: Emoncms and Rain Gauge
Hey Ian,
I would really appreciate it if you could upload your sketch, aslo I suppose I can use the spare digital inputs ?
for example I would connect the 2 wires from the raid gauge to say DI06 and GND ?
Re: Emoncms and Rain Gauge
Paul
I tried software debounce with very little success. I then read this thread:-
http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/node/5022
It suggests software debounce should not be used in interrupts.
Warlock
Code attached.
Regards
Ian
Re: Emoncms and Rain Gauge
Ian, I used the software debounce to halt and put the processor to sleep, rather than wake it up! So yes I can see the difficulty.