☔ DIY Zigbee rain gauge

Yes. I wonder how accurate that would be. It would be a good experiment to have them side by side and compare the values.

Edit: reading the post now, I do not see an example of the quantity of rain. Only the intensity

Used the wrong word, indeed intensity but this might give an idea about the quantity.

That is interesting. I just placed an order on Aliexpress before knowing of this rain 2in1 sensor.

Hello,
This zigbee sensor normally detects water leak. If raining, heavy or little rain, it should trigger info. On top of, being AAA-Battery powered and less expensive, it should keep charge on a longer period than button cell based units.
You could also locate the main unit inside the rain collector box and the water detector contact, thanks to its contact cable, inside the collector …

HTH

Th

https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/1005005220809595.html
2024-08-14

Thanks Parrel for this great idea and the perfect instructions.
I used a wired Shelly Plus 1 + Shelly Plus addon for this. I didn’t want to use a battery as it can get very cold here in winter. I have no experience with ESP and Shellys are very easy to integrate with Home Assistant.
To mount the rain gauge, I ordered a “Misol mounting arm” from AliExpress.
I let 1740 ml drip into the rain gauge over 4 hours and measured 1100 flips.
1740 ml / 1100 flips = 1.5818181818 ml/flip
I measured the area of the rain gauge as 5470 mm².
5.47 ml = 1 mm of precipitation
5.47 ml / 1.5818181818 flips = 0.28918065 ml/flip

Now it just has to rain.

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hello. I am starting to use influxdb v.2 and grafana and wanted to stat the today, weekly, yearly on the same table, but not having much luck. Anyone would like to share their code??? Thx.

Can anyone hint me what’s the issue here?

sensor:
- platform: history_stats
    name: Rainsensor flips 
    entity_id: binary_sensor.regenmesser_contact
    state: 'off'
    type: count
    start: '{{ now().replace(hour=0, minute=0, second=0) }}'
    end: '{{ now() }}'  


sensor:
- platform: template
  sensors:
   device_tracker_1:
    value_template: "{% if is_state('device_tracker.ip13_von_1', 'not_home') %}Unterwegs{% elif is_state('device_tracker.ip13_von_1', 'home') %}Zu Hause{% else %}{{ states('device_tracker.ip13_von_1') }}{% endif %}"


- platform: 1
  display_options:
      - exchangerate
      - trade_volume_1
      
template:
  - sensor:
      - name: Rainfall today
        unit_of_measurement: mm
        state_class: total_increasing
        unique_id: rainfall_today
        state: >-
          {% set count = states('sensor.rainsensor_flips') | int(0) %}
          {% set mm = count * 0.30303 %}
          {% if count >= 0 %}
            {{ mm|round(1, 'floor') }}
          {% endif %}
        # If you have issues with the history sensor doubling after restarting HA, add the line below (@BigG)
        availability: "{{ (states('sensor.rainsensor_flips') not in ('unknown', 'unavailable')) }}"

Error-Message:

bad indentation of a mapping entry (29:9)

26 |
27 | sensor:
28 | - platform: history_stats
29 | name: Rainsensor flips
--------------^
30 | entity_id: binary_sensor.regenmesse …
31 | state: ‘off’

Everything should be at the same depth for the History Stats sensor:

sensor:
  - platform: history_stats
    name: Rainsensor flips 
    entity_id: binary_sensor.regenmesser_contact
    state: 'off'
    type: count
    start: '{{ today_at() }}'
    end: '{{ now() }}'  
2 Likes

Awesome, that helped!

I don’t think this would work. I have a few of these at home and they basically need to be in a noticeable pool of water before going off reliably. It’s more than what a drizzle would provide unless it’s pooling, at which point you’d be seeing it in a normal rain gauge.

There may be promise for a wide funnel that collects rain into a narrow tube that is then measured with an ultrasonic sensor.

Hi,
Many thanks for this Tip !
One question : it’s mm by what ? cm2, m2 ??

It doesn’t really matter. If it would rain 1mm, and you have a square centimeter surface, the rain would still be 1mm ‘high’. Same goes for a square meter.

However 1mm of rain on a square meter equals 1 liter of water.

1 Like