Automated rain gauge stations with a GSM data transmission link

Abstract

An automated, remote rainfall gauging system is developed to monitor the rainfall in five remote areas from one base station. The automated rain gauge stations (ARGSs) were installed at five selected locations in Sri Lanka. Two replica base stations are going to be installed at the department of meteorology, and national building research organization (NBRO). The base stations and the ARGSs are connected with a global system for mobile communication (GSM) link. The ARGS sends rainfall data every hour and if the intensity of rainfall exceeds a pre-determined threshold level a warning is given and rainfall data sent at a higher rate. The automated rain gauge station consist of a microcontroller based acquisition and controlling system, a GSM modem based communication link, A real time clock (RTC), a lightning protection system, and a surge protection system. Rain gauge is built with a tipping bucket. Rainfall together with date and time obtained from the RTC is sent as an SMS every hour to the base stations. Current rainfall can be observed by an LCD (liquid crystal display) attached to the ARGS and the backlight of the LCD is automatically illuminated by capturing the presence of human being via IR (infrared) proximity sensor. The base station consists of a PC and a GSM modem. Application software displays the rainfall individually for all ARGSs in graphical and tabular formats. The captured rainfall data from all ARGSs are also saved to a database