Any ideas on automated water measurement with following arrangement and tolerance:
I’ve built a rain gauge. Currently, I’ve got a 4.5” ID diameter tube upright to collect water. Every night, at midnight, arduino with RTC module opens a solenoid valve and dumps the water into a dry receptacle then closes the valve until next night.
As part of my morning routine, I weigh the water and manually record the rain amount.
Few days a year, in the jungle, we’ll get 10” or more in 24 hours. Up to 3 quarts, or ~6# of water. Other days might be a dribble.
Right now, my tolerance is tight and I’d like to keep it. Within 5 ml (grams by weight).
Flow meter wouldn’t work, tolerance isn’t close, and won’t work for dribble days.
Any ideas how to automate the measurement so it can record multiple individual days without an operator?
Weight measuring is one suggestion. The system has to be calibrated, have its tara established.
Having the sensor in order is the hard part. Programming a controller reading the sensor is the small part.
I had good luck with a home made tipping bucket type rain gauge. I used a Hall sensor to sense the bucket tip count. An optical interrupter will work as well. Connect the output of the the sensor to an Arduino to keep track of the amount of rain per temporal period of choice.
That type of gauge needs no human interaction and is easy to calibrate for pretty accurate measurement.
I should have mentioned that I have tried a tipping bucket gauge that was sold as professional and it just wasn’t accurate so I started weighing it myself. Even the professional ones are listed as 2% +-
I found a 5kg scale component made to interface with arduino. Perhaps I just keep the receptacle on that, take a data point at midnight full, open valve to empty it, then weigh the tare.
