Hi,
I’m looking hard for any zigbee- and battery based tipping buckets, and couldn’t find anything. Then, this idea came up in my silly mind:
Since cheap standard tipping buckets (like the cheap mi-sol one) seem to use reed-switches and magnets for their pulsing, and the common zigbee door/window-contacts (like the xiaomi/aqara ones) use the same technology … wouldn’t it be dirt-easy to either rip a window-contact open, solder the reed-switch from the tipping-bucket onto it, and be finished?
Of course all the pulse-counting and summing would have to be done on home-assistant side, but that’s what it’s for right?
Two points worry me, and stop me from trying (even though the experiment is quite cheap, ~18$):
- First, with heavy rain, will the pulses come so quick that the window switch keep up? It’s probably made for lower-frequency stuff, and maybe its debouncing logic makes it lose pulses …?
- What about the battery? These little buggers only wake up and use their radio on pulses, and a tipping bucket tips way more often than a window opens. Otoh, there are other LiMn battries with the same voltages / behavior and a lot more capacity out there … so just use another one?
What do you think of this idea? Could it work? Horrible idea? Anything i missed? Notes about my 2 worry-points?
Thanks in advance ^_^. Best,
-NebuK