[Weather] dual drains -- was Re: conversion help

[Dave McGuire]

On Nov 21, 2006, at 3:16 PM, David Fullmer wrote:
> I don't remember where I found it on the internet, but has anyone  
> else seen a piezo-transducer based rain gauge.  It was kind of a  
> slick design - no moving parts (in the classic sense).  It had a  
> flat, horizontal, circular, stainless steel surface with a lip that  
> curved down to protect the sensing element(s) directly below on the  
> lower (back) surface.  It integrated the rain impact energy over  
> time to determine rain fall amount and rate.  Not a One Wire  
> solution, but still an interesting device.  The rain then just ran  
> off of the surface over the edge.  No tipping buckets, no drain  
> holes to clog, no bug issues, no temperature sensitivities, but I  
> don't know how severe wind might effect it nor how well it would  
> measure very, very light rain.  I would think that anything that  
> produced vibration might/could be an issue, but maybe that's been  
> designed or filtered out somehow in the waveform processing of the  
> sensor output.  Probably not a cheap instrument either.  But sounds  
> like it might be an interesting project to turn into a kit somehow.

   Damn that's a good idea.  One would scale, digitize, and integrate  
the output of the piezo transducer, and map that to a lookup table or  
equation to scale it to true volume.

   Wowowow...that's a NEAT idea!

                   -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire
Cape Coral, FL