Remotely Monitoring Rain and Precipitation with Valarm Tools Cloud

This is a Hydreon RG-11 rain sensor. It behaves like a tipping bucket and reports a tick / count each time there is 0.01” inches of rain. Deploy this rain sensor wherever you would like to measure precipitation.

These RG-11 rain sensors connect to Tools.Valarm.net via sensor hubs connected to Yoctopuce Knob / switch counter sensors.

Open your RG-11 sensor and connect a 4 wire cable to the electronic board inside the sensor.

In our deployments you’ll probably see a cable with green, white, red, and black wires. The green wire connects to COM / common ground. The white wire connects to NO / normally open circuit switch.

The red wire connects to PWR1 which is a + positive 12V power source. The black wire connects to PWR2, which is a – negative 12V power source.

Run the cables from rain sensors into your Valarm monitoring boxes through cable glands to protect the box hardware components from the elements and badgers.

Once a cable from an RG-11 rain sensor is in a Valarm box, you’ll connect the green wire to the ground port on the Yoctopuce Knob’s green connection block.

Connect the white wire to the knob channel you’d like to use for counting and monitoring rain, e.g., channel 1.

Crimp or otherwise connect the red and black cables from the rain sensor to a 12V power source, e.g., the Load terminals on your solar charge controller.

Once you have your sensor hub with the Knob and RG-11 on Tools.Valarm.net, map your Knob channel to a field / column, e.g., Resistance channel 1.

Remember to select Pulse counter mode since we want to measure pulses / ticks for this rain sensor, where each pulse is 0.01” inches of rain.

Set up a Totalizer on Valarm Tools Cloud to keep track of rain in the exact format you need.

For example, you can set up a totalizer to divide by 2 and multiply by 0.01 then store that value in the Calc 1 field / column. Then you’ll have what inches of rain the sensor has monitored in the field you’ve chosen.

In the photo you see an example of a Knob sensor inside a weatherproof remote monitoring system. The Hydreon RG-11 rain sensor enters the box through a cable gland and attaches to the knob sensor adapter as detailed above.

Note: This page is a detailed breakdown of 1 critical component in solar-powered, Valarm remote monitoring units.

Click here to go back to the home page of “What’s In A Valarm Industrial IoT remote monitoring system?” and finalize all the rest of the pieces you need for Industrial IoT with Tools.Valarm.net.

Questions?

Please don’t hesitate to contact us at Info@Valarm.net if you have any questions.