An Automated Rainfall Monitoring System

The paper describes a system to automate the monitoring and recording of rainfall using cellular network infrastructure. The paper describes the hardware and the software components and the data communication aspects of the design, and their integration as a complete system.

Ancient Sri Lanka had been proud for centuries, of a very successful agricultural economy. Today, even though Agriculture still plays a key role in the Sri Lankan Economy, the agricultural sector has failed to keep up with the adoption of advancing technology and has thus fallen behind many other developing nations.

Weather information such as rainfall is critical for successful agricultural activities. Unfortunately present methods of monitoring such information utilize manual observation and recording of data which is highly error-prone. Automation of these monitoring methods can not only increase the reliability, but also improve the timely availability of data, and hence contribute significantly to the betterment of agriculture in day-to-day activities as well as to long-term planning.

The system consists of rain gauges with wireless interfaces and a central station. The rainfall information is transferred via SMS (Short Message Service) messages to the central station via a GSM cellular network. The information is received in a database at the central station and can be accessed via the Internet, and the data analyzed.