I’m building a solar powered weather project and I need a rain sensor. Something like what comes with the Sparkfun kit.https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8942. I don’t need the other parts of that kit so it is too expensive to buy that just for a rain sensor. I’ve done a lot of web searching and haven’t yet found a self-emptying bucket like that that is not part of a kit or that doesn’t already have electronics incorporated.
Does anyone know where I can find something that would work (with an Arduino)? Thanks.
That would be a correct assumption. I did find a commercial one for less than $20 so it is cost-effective and doesn’t require me to learn 3D printing and source the parts. Plus calibration is rather tricky to measure rain accurately. Learning 3D printing will be another project for me later on.
Most rain buckets I’ve looked at are in the $50 to $100 range. Get one with a cable to the display, I think most of them just pass the contact closure to the display.
Most are tilting-buckets. A funnel fills one bucket until its weight tilts, it empties, and a magnet then passes by a reed switch. Then the other bucket begins to fill.
Rainwise and others make these. The math has to do with the diameter of the funnel and the tilting point weight - usually set to 0.01 inch of rain per tilt.
I’ve bought sensor-only as above, not a full station.
Lots of under $100 weather stations, e.g., La Crosse, with rain, wind speed/direction, temperature, humidity, indoor/outdoor, all wireless, USB or wireless link to PC. I have two.