{"id":1924,"date":"2020-05-10T10:44:22","date_gmt":"2020-05-10T17:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/?p=1924"},"modified":"2024-05-25T18:30:07","modified_gmt":"2024-05-26T01:30:07","slug":"connecting-a-hydreon-infrared-rain-sensor-to-a-esp8266-or-arduino-or-raspberry-pi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/connecting-a-hydreon-infrared-rain-sensor-to-a-esp8266-or-arduino-or-raspberry-pi\/","title":{"rendered":"Connecting a Hydreon Infrared Rain Sensor to a ESP8266 (or Arduino or Raspberry Pi)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’ve been working on a home-brew weather station<\/a> and was looking into rain sensors when I discovered that you can get infrared (IR) rain detectors. A company in Minnesota sells one called the Hydreon RG-11<\/a>. They shoot pulses of IR light around a plastic dome and monitor them on the other end. When rain hits the dome, the refraction changes and the pulses received are perturbed. This is nice because it’s very simple and has no moving parts. I figured I’d be able to find a way to read it into my weather station. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
The RG-11 rain sensor with a NodeMCU for scale. (It’s actually bigger than I thought)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

There are a variety of modes<\/a> you can use. I wanted early indication of when it started raining (so I could get an alert from Home Assistant to close the windows). But I also wanted some measure of the actual rain intensity. Thus, I decided that a small “tipping bucket”<\/a> mode would work best for me. In this mode, the sensor just closes a relay whenever it thinks a certain amount of rain has fallen. Here’s a quick demo of it clicking:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n