Design of Digital Tipping Bucket Rain Gauge

Abstract

Rainfall is the amount of rain that falls in a particular area during a particular period of time. Rainfall has a massive effect on the planet and life, it represents major source of water. The rain gauge is equipment that used in weather stations to measure cumulative rainfall at a given location and given time. Rain gauge also known as udometer or pluviometer consists of main part can collect water fall from funnel above it, and outer case to protect the inner can. The new design of rain gauge gives more accurate reading and has many advantage such as observer can observe rainfall remotely, the measure of rainfall is according to tip drop not only looking at the water level, the digital reading can be easy taken. Tipping bucket rain gauge is a new device that has all advantage of the criteria above. This rain gauge is using two small buckets acting like see-saw, when one of the buckets fills with water it will spill because of the unbalance of see-saw. Then the other bucket will fill with water and repeat the same action like the first bucket and keep repeating until the rain stop. In this dissertation the digital rain gauge is build with the combination of the microcontroller, magnet sensor and PC. This digital device when tested it measure rain fall with precise readings. It’s very cheap when compared with the market cost.