Propotype of WSN optical rain gauge development and setup

Abstract

For the restriction of transportation and communication in mountain area, most rain gauges are setting at easy approached places. Although most sever rainfall are occurred at some unreachable area. Different interpolation skills are applied in those issue. There are huge bias existing and it is hard to make better disaster warning.

The revolution of telecommunication skill can afford wider, cheaper and quickly wireless communication in this decay.

Connect to the idea of “Internet of Things”, a new portable rain gauge device is developed in this project. Approached by UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle), which is possible carry small rain gauge, up to 8Kg device, to mountain top with stable power and communication system. When these cheap rain gauge system could be wildly distributed, it is possible catch better precipitation and could announce warning message before the land slide happened.

This project is created from nothing and could be called a multidisciplinary research project. It is completed by many working meeting and experiments, which combined rain gauge searching, communication system design, UAV instruction, observation architecture design, power and wiring technology etc. Most important is the field examination during Typhoon. After a few times correction, during Typhoon MEGI in Sep. 2015, it is approved that this portable rain gauge device is capable to get the right observation and has good economy benefit to widely usage in near future.

Key Words: Rain gauge, wireless sensor networks, sediment hazards